TENNIS – Monte-Carlo 2014. It is hard to face the press when you have just blown away a match where you were comfortably leading, but when you do that by showing the worst of your character it is probably harder. Giulio Gasparin
Fognini sounded relaxed though, contrary to what it looked like in the last 20 minutes of his match, when Tsonga was taking the pieces of a self-destroying opponent.
After being prized by many journalists for his attitude’s change in the past year, this afternoon it was as if a tape from 2012 was being showed: a great show of talent until something went wrong, then it was a theatre of horrors.
“It is hard, the linesman made a horrible call and that caused all of that and I fell in his trap,” said he commenting on the bad call that turned the match around.
“He ruined the second set and then, in the third set, I remained nervous and maybe because of that I felt some pain in my leg and I could not control it,” added he.
“I had every right to complain and one must say it, then everyone reacts in a different way and that was mine.
“That point surely hasn’t influenced the third set, my adductor has, as it still hurts. For sure I haven’t lost the match solely because of that call.”
He then tried a joke as today it was Tsonga’s birthday: “The seventeen points in a row for him were his birthday present, so that at least he is happy and can go out and play Federer tomorrow.”
The tip of the iceberg was reached on the last change over, when he insulted loudly from the bench his team in the bleachers.
“In that moment I was furious and I swore at my team, my dad, my physio, all of them, because in that moment I could not think,” he said. “It was a way to get it off, I am not the first one to do it, if you watch Murray, he often does it.”
Despite the loss, Fognini did not look for excused and when asked if maybe it was also caused by the pressure of reaching the top ten.
He said: “I don’t think it was caused by pressures, as for tennis the quality was actually quite high and I felt well, but then we know how it finished.
“Now I could blame the pressure, but I don’t think so, surely I had expectations, I knew I could win, but it was not because of it that I lost.
“I know where I faulted and we will see if I can do better next week.”
Tsonga was a lot more polite in his speech as he said: “we all know Fabio, he has always been like that, so for me it does not come as a surprise, I thought it could happen and so he gave me a present for my birthday.
“For this reason we love him.”
He then added: “Fabio is a character and he is always capable of putting up a nice theatre, but it is cool like this…from the very first point he started discussing with the umpire, if I did not stop him, he could have gone on for ten minutes.”
But if Tsonga is not set to play the quarter-finals of this tournament, Fognini decided to start another match, this time against some ‘fans’ on twitter.
The Italian replied to quite a few of the insults he received after the match, not always in a nice manner.
