Casper Ruud had a heated exchange with the umpire during his second round match at the US Open before crashing out of the tournament to China’s Zhang Zhizhen.
The fifth seed suffered a shock 6-4, 5-7, 6-2, 0-6, 6-2, loss to the world No.67 who has become the first male player from his country to defeat a top-five player on the Tour since the ranking system was introduced in 1973. Zhang was in impressive form as he hit 60 winners past his opponent and blasted 18 aces. However, there was also controversy in the match during the closing stages.
After Ruud claimed the fourth set to love, Zhang left the court for a break which ended up taking several minutes. The Norweigan was visibly unhappy with the length of time his opponent was taking and hit out at the umpire whom he accused of not following the rulebook.
“Why don’t you do anything?” Ruud said to the official. “You follow the rules clearly some times then other times you don’t give a shit. Why don’t you do anything?”
The 24-year-old later said in his press conference that the delay affected his momentum in the match. In the decider, Ruud was broken immediately at the start and then dropped his serve again three games later.
“It’s six, seven minutes where I kind of walk around doing nothing,” Ruud said. “Lost my maybe groove there, and that’s frustrating because you’re on a roll, you won the fourth set, you want to kind of keep going.
“That’s why I was a little frustrated, kind of asked the umpire about what the rules are here.”
Whilst frustrated with his opponent’s time-keeping, the world No.5 said he ‘give credit’ to Zhang who is the only Chinese man to reach the third round of a major event on multiple occasions in the Open Era.
Ruud has now lost to a player outside of the world’s top 50 nine times this year. According to OptaAce, only two top-five ranked players have suffered more losses in the same season in the Open Era. Yevgeny Kafelnikov was beaten 11 times in 2000 and Nikolay Davydenko lost 10 times in 2007.
“It hasn’t been what I hoped,” Ruud commented on his 2023 results.
“But I was pretty honest last year that I have to prepare for a tough year because things last year went beyond my expectations for myself.”
“This year the highlight was (reaching the final of) Roland Garros. Without Roland Garros, I would be pretty disappointed with how the year has been.’
“In general, I’m disappointed with other results. I think there’s time to kind of go back, reflect on certain losses that I hope can be kind of shaved off in the future, get some rest home and then go strong from Laver Cup onwards.”
As a result of his loss, 2022 runner-up Ruud will drop 1155 points and is now in danger of dropping out of the world’s top 10 for the first time since September 2021.