Jodar Is Warned for Swearing at a Ball Kid, Then Completes His Third Shanghai Comeback

Rafael Jodar is having the week of his season in Shanghai, and on Wednesday it acquired a formal warning. A set down to Botic van de Zandschulp in the fourth round, the 20-year-old Spaniard lost a break point at the start of the second set, demanded his towel from a ball kid in language the chair umpire understood, and was given a code violation for unsportsmanlike conduct. He then did the two things that make the story: he argued, lost the argument, calmed down, and won.

What exactly did Jodar do to earn the warning?

He swore at the wrong person at the wrong volume. SuperSport reports Jodar had fired a shot long to lose the break point, after dropping the first set on a tiebreak, when he shouted his towel demand in Spanish. Chair umpire Jimmy Pinoargote, who understood every word, issued the warning for unsportsmanlike conduct under the ATP rulebook. AP, in its Shanghai roundup, records the same warning against the 12th seed, which is the detail that separates this from a fan-clip rumour: the sanction is in the official match record, not just on social video.

What did the umpire tell him when he argued?

That the route to the towel runs through the chair. SuperSport reports Jodar complained that his request was being ignored, and Pinoargote answered that he understood, but could not excuse the language, and that Jodar should ask him, and he would ask the ball kid. Asked what he had said, Jodar was told the umpire could not repeat it, and that he knew what he had said. It is a small, complete piece of officiating: the complaint about service speed was heard, the method of making it was punished, and the correct channel was spelled out in front of the crowd.

Did the warning actually change anything on court?

TennisUpToDate reports it did, immediately and measurably. Jodar spoke to the ball crew in a calmer tone for the rest of the match, converted his third break point in that same game, and took the second set on his sixth set point after holding off a fightback. The decider was a double-break runaway, 6-2, for a 6-7(4), 6-4, 6-2 win. AP notes it was his third straight victory from a set down in Shanghai, after similar comebacks against Thiago Agustin Tirante and Jiri Lehecka, and it puts him into a fourth Masters 1000 quarter-final, all since April.

Why are fans comparing this with Djokovic?

Because the same fortnight produced an unsanctioned version. Tennis365 points out that Novak Djokovic was visibly spiky with ball kids during his China Open run, was called out for it on Eurosport France by Nicolas Mahut, and never received the warning Jodar got in Shanghai. The comparison is not proof of favouritism, and this desk is not treating it as one. It is, though, the reason a routine code violation is travelling: a 20-year-old ranked outside the top 160 in January was pulled up for conduct a 24-time major champion was criticised for, but not sanctioned over, days earlier. Conduct rows have been Shanghai’s second draw all week, from Wu Yibing calling Zverev’s behaviour unnecessary to the spectator claims around Zverev and the practice court.

What is at stake for Jodar from here?

A place at the season-ending finals, improbably. TennisUpToDate reports the win lifts him to 11th in the Race to Turin, with Jannik Sinner’s season over and a place opening up, the same absence that settled the year-end number one race in Zverev’s favour. Next he faces Casper Ruud, who came through when Felix Auger-Aliassime retired hurt, for a semi-final place. The conduct question travels with him: TennisUpToDate lists earlier ball-crew flashpoints this year, none sanctioned, which makes Wednesday’s warning the first formal mark against a player whose tennis, this week, has needed no help from his temper. Shanghai has already seen one favourite’s week end in a conduct ruling, when Medvedev was disqualified at the China Open a week earlier in Beijing, and Jodar’s task now is to make sure his tournament is remembered for the comebacks instead. His quarter-final opponent’s side of the draw, and Zverev’s own ankle-managed run, will decide how long that chance lasts.

What did Jodar say when he reached the semi-finals? (Update, October 16)

Update, October 16: he apologised, and he did it in the same press room where the warning had followed him for two days. Jodar beat Ruud 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 on Friday, saving match points before Ruud, who saved three of Jodar’s own, double-faulted the match away, AFP via Flashscore reports. The win makes him the youngest semi-finalist in the Shanghai Masters’ history, in a season that began with him ranked 168th. Asked about Wednesday, Jodar said he had thought about it after the match, that he should not have done that to the ball kid, that it was his mistake, and that he wished to apologise to the ball boy, SuperSport reports. His framing was a learning one: alongside the forehand, the backhand and the serve, he is still learning how to behave on court, and he is not perfect. John Isner, on the Nothing Major podcast, offered the defence from the other side of the net, calling it frustration in Shanghai’s heat and saying people online need to calm down, The Tennis Gazette reports. Jodar now plays Daniil Medvedev for a place in the final, after Medvedev beat Tommy Paul 6-3, 1-6, 6-3 in Friday’s other quarter-final, AP reports, and any ATP fine for the original incident is still to be announced.

What happened in the semi-final against Medvedev? (Update, October 17)

Update, October 17: the apology week now ends in a Masters 1000 final. Jodar beat Medvedev 6-3, 6-4 in an hour and 44 minutes on Saturday, breaking the 2019 champion three times and closing the match on his fourth match point with a running forehand pass, TennisNow reports. It is the biggest win of his career by ranking, and it comes with a small stack of firsts: he is the first player born in 2006 to reach a Masters 1000 final, and the second-youngest man to record 20 Masters 1000 wins in a season, after Rafael Nadal in 2005. Sunday’s final is against Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, who upset top seed Alexander Zverev 5-7, 6-4, 6-3 in the other semi-final, Reuters reports, which makes it the first all-Spanish Masters 1000 final in nine years, since Nadal beat Albert Ramos-Vinolas in Monte Carlo in 2017, and the ninth in the format’s history. Jodar’s own summary stayed flat: he said he was happy with how his season and tournament are going, credited his mentality and the shape the earlier rounds had given him, and noted there is still one more match. The win lifts him to No. 11 in the live rankings and ninth in the Race to Turin, so the final carries a season-finals place as well as a first big title. The warning from Wednesday is still part of his week, and so is the apology that followed it. Which of the two the week is remembered by now depends on one more match.

What happened in the final against Davidovich Fokina? (Update, October 18)

Update, October 18: the title went to the other Spaniard, in the manner of the whole tournament. Davidovich Fokina beat Jodar 1-6, 7-6(5), 6-4 in two hours and 27 minutes on Sunday, Reuters reports, rallying from a set and a break down to win the biggest title of his career. Jodar, playing his first Masters 1000 final and, at 20, the youngest finalist in the tournament’s history, broke for 2-0 and again for 5-1 to take the opening set at a run. The second set turned on survival rather than attack: Davidovich Fokina recovered from a break down, saved break points in three successive service games, and edged the tiebreak, Reuters reports. AP records the point that swung it, a drop shot retrieved at full stretch and passed down the line on a backhand while off balance, after which the winner fell on his back with his arms spread.

The decider was where Jodar’s week caught up with him. Davidovich Fokina broke him twice, Reuters reports, and at 4-3 in the third set Jodar called for a trainer and had a massage on his right thigh, AP reports. In the next game he grimaced and clutched his left foot after slightly twisting it as he ran to the net, and had a massage on his left thigh at the changeover. He finished the match, and lost it on Davidovich Fokina’s second match point, beaten by a serve he could not return. The champion’s own reading was physical, not tactical: in the third set, he said, he may have had a bit more fitness. It was Davidovich Fokina’s third title of the year, after ATP 250 wins in Mallorca and Chengdu, and it ended a run of five lost finals to start his career, AP reports. He had saved a match point against Frances Tiafoe in the third round and rallied from a set down against Zverev in the semi-final, so Jodar was the third comeback in his week, not an accident.

Jodar leaves Shanghai with the runner-up plate, a first Masters 1000 final at 20, and a week that still contains its warning and its apology alongside the tennis. The title would have rewritten the story. The loss leaves it as it was: a breakthrough run by a player whose conduct file and whose results file grew in the same seven days, and whose next ranking, published Monday, will say how much of the week the standings kept.

What did Medvedev threaten in that semi-final? (Update, October 18)

Update, October 18: the semi-final had a second conduct story inside it, and it belonged to the loser. At 4-2 and 40-40 in the first set, on Jodar’s serve, Jodar’s cross-court forehand clipped the line and Medvedev’s return sailed long and was called out. Medvedev was not disputing his own shot. He wanted chair umpire Adel Nour to show him a replay of Jodar’s forehand, which he believed had landed out, Tennis World USA reports. Nour explained that the protocol allowed a review of only the final shot of the rally, which was Medvedev’s own forehand. Medvedev argued that because his ball was out, Jodar’s was the last shot that mattered, and then he made it a threat: “I’m not moving; I can retire, I don’t care. The ATP gives me a fine anyway. I will retire; show me the ball.”

Nour checked whether the replay could be shown, and it was shown. The ball had landed in, exactly as the automated system had called it. Medvedev had no case, apologised, and played on, Tennis Watcher reports, and lost the set and then the match. On Sky Sports, Naomi Broady said she would have loved Nour to call the bluff, and Jonathan Overend called the sequence ridiculous: a protocol explained, then set aside the moment a player threatened to walk, TennisHead reports. The episode now sits in Jodar’s week alongside his own warning, with the roles reversed. The 20-year-old was sanctioned on Wednesday for how he spoke to a ball kid and apologised on Friday. The former world number one threatened to quit a Masters 1000 semi-final over a ball that was in, and the only sanction in prospect is the fine he named in advance as a price he was willing to pay. Any ATP ruling on the exchange joins the still-unannounced ball-kid fine on this page’s open file.

What did Brad Gilbert say about the ball-kid incident? (Update, October 22)

Update, October 22: the harshest verdict yet, from the most decorated coach to speak on it. Brad Gilbert, the former world No. 4 who coached Andre Agassi, Coco Gauff and Andy Roddick, called Jodar’s behaviour “inexcusable” on Tennis Channel’s The Big T podcast, Tennis365 reports. “There’s a lot of things that happen on a court but this is one thing that is inexcusable,” Gilbert said. “You can never lose it on a ball kid. The one where he literally snapped about not getting his towel and swearing at a ball kid to me is inexcusable.”

Gilbert went further than criticism and into prescription: Jodar should watch the video, learn from it, and make sure that if he gets mad it never has anything to do with a ball person again, because that, he said, is controllable, Sportskeeda reports. He added that losing it on a ball kid should be less acceptable than losing it on an umpire, and that the apology, which he accepted, now has to hold: “this will never happen again.”

The turn matters because Gilbert had been on Jodar’s side this season. Sportskeeda notes he praised the Spaniard’s backhand and returning in August, so this is praise turning to sanction from the same voice, not a fresh attack from a critic. It also sets up the two verdicts side by side: John Isner, on the Nothing Major podcast, had defended Jodar as frustrated in Shanghai’s heat and told people online to calm down; Gilbert, on Tennis Channel, has now answered that the conduct is the part that cannot be contextualised away. Gilbert closed with the compliment wrapped around the warning: Jodar is a very cool customer who is headed toward the top five, but “this thing, he needs to put to bed.”

Elsewhere in tennis’s late-night catalogue, Lorenzo Musetti asked for his phone mid-match in Lyon after his 1am anti-doping alarm went off, a different kind of on-court interruption that, like the Shanghai ball-kid warning, turned a match into a talking point beyond the score.