'Looks like J-Lo': Chair umpire steals the show at Australian Open
Marijana Veljovic is once again the talk of the tennis world after her battle with Nick Kyrgios at the Australian Open on Wednesday night.
Fans flocked to social media to commend the way Veljovic kept her composure as Kyrgios raged about having serves called ‘lets’ when he believed they had travelled way over the net.
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Kyrgios vented his frustrations at Veljovic every time the net technology pinged one of his serves, even though there was nothing she could do about it.
“It’s bulls***, look at the score,” Kyrgios said to Veljovic.
“It’s ruining the game. It’s ruining the game.
“You don’t understand it’s f***ing one-all in the fifth set.”
Veljovic hit Kyrgios with a point penalty after he smashed a ball at her umpire’s chair, and showed leniency not to deduct him a whole game when he subsequently swore at her.
Fans were full of praise for Veljovic’s handling of the tricky situation, while also pointing out her uncanny resemblance to a certain pop star.
Respect to that umpire for keeping her cool in the face of kyrgios... being kyrgios lol (she also checked to see if the let sensor was working properly when the set ended, that was good too)
— Sara Sisti 🇨🇦 (@12SaraaZ) February 10, 2021
Agree or disagree with the behaviour, this chair umpire holds herself incredibly well.
Composure under fire.— n 1 c k (@nicksplitter) February 10, 2021
She umpired a Federer match at last year's Australian Open. She's the Serbian J-Lo doppelgänger. Spectacularly good umpire, with the way she handled that let machine debacle so cool & calm.
— Joe McCarthy (@JoeMcCarthy24) February 10, 2021
Full credit to the chair umpire with #Kyrgios last night thought she did a great job.
Calm and Concise and let Nick have a blow up about the Net Senor Technology.#AustralianOpen@atptour— Brad Wiedmann (@_BWeed_) February 10, 2021
Am I the only one who thinks the chair umpire looks like JLo? #AO2021
— Michael (@michaeloco90) February 10, 2021
This chair umpire is the love child of Ariana Grande and Jennifer Lopez and now you can't unsee it #AusOpen
— Daniel Beswick (@DGBeswick1) February 10, 2021
The chair umpire for Kyrgios match looks like Jennifer Lopez😂
— Henry Sutanto (@fbib) February 10, 2021
Veljovic also went viral during the 2020 Australian Open after a heated argument with Roger Federer.
Canadian tennis star Eugenie Bouchard took to Twitter full of admiration for the Serbian umpire.
“The umpire in this roger/tennys match is super pretty,” Bouchard tweeted.
And she was also at the centre of controversy at the US Open when German tennis great Boris Becker commented on her looks.
“I have to say, the umpire is extremely pretty,” Becker said in commentary for EuroSport Germany.
“You eat with your eyes.”
Social media users condemned Becker’s comments as “creepy” and “disgusting”.
Kyrgios’ running battle with chair umpire
Earlier on Wednesday night, Kyrgios had clashed with Veljovic about the let farce.
“Turn the machine off, it’s ruining the game, you’ve gotta understand me,” he said.
“It’s missing the net by that much. How do you not understand that? Did you turn it off?
“Turn it off. I’m not playing until you turn it off. It’s this far off the net.”
He then expended in his post-match press conference.
“Having technology like that, you sound like an idiot trying to argue against it,” he said.
“But even when (Humbert) was serving, it was literally this far (gestures with his hands to indicate about 20cm) over the net and the net thing went off.
“I was like there’s no chance this was accurate. If you have a device where you can turn down the sensitivities, I just think there’s too many variables.
“I don’t know. I don’t have the solution … maybe they need to upgrade their technology.”
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