Paraguayan tennis player Adolfo Daniel Vallejo will be fined after he suggested women lack the courage to umpire rowdy crowds following his marathon five-hour defeat by a French teenager, the French Tennis Federation (FFT) said on Friday.

Vallejo blamed Brazilian referee Ana Carvalho for failing to control the home crowd during his second-round loss to France’s Moise Kouame, who triumphed 6-3 7-5 3-6 2-6 7-6 (10-8) at a packed Court Suzanne Lenglen.

“I think this sort of matches should be umpired by a man,” Vallejo told Clay magazine. “It’s very difficult for a woman to do it because the crowd is very annoying. You need to have a lot of courage to go against the crowd.”

Vallejo added that Kouame “took up a lot of time on many occasions, lying on the floor or stalling”. “And it’s not normal for the crowd to be shouting for a full minute without any play. In a match where the physical aspect matters so much, if you give a player a lot of time he’s obviously going to take advantage of it.”

The FFT swiftly condemned the comments as “unacceptable” and announced the fine. “The competence of an umpire is not determined by their gender, but by their professionalism and ability to officiate at the highest level,” the FFT said in a statement.

Vallejo attempted damage control on social media, claiming his comments were taken out of context. “I never spoke about women in general, I was referring specifically to the referee, who failed to manage the crowd at any point during the match,” he posted on X.

Source: www.aljazeera.com