British tennis star Cameron Norrie accidentally hits a woman in the stands with a racket thrown in Auckland

British tennis star Cameron Norrie has apologized and avoided disqualification when a racket he threw in the air hit a spectator at the ATP Tour tournament in Auckland on Tuesday.

Auckland-born Norrie was serving a match point against Argentina’s Facundo Diaz Acosta when he lightly tossed his racket in the air. The racket hit a woman in a court box who was not injured.

Video of the incident it showed a woman in a hat reacting quickly and deflecting the racket away as the crowd erupted.

Norrie received a warning from the chair umpire and lost 6-2, 6-3 in the first round of the tournament. He reached the final in Auckland in 2023.

“I didn’t want to do that, but it’s still not ideal to do that and I’ve never done anything like that,” Norrie said. (The spectator) “laughed and I just said” so sorry, I didn’t want to do this. And she said “yes, I’m completely OK.”

“It wasn’t a big deal. But as we’ve seen with some other players, you can easily be defaulted if he takes them in the wrong place or they’re not looking or something.

“I didn’t mean to do this and it’s completely not to do something like that. I apologized very quickly and I want to apologize in general. I’m not happy with how I behaved.”

According to ESPN, Norrie was ranked 49th in the world last year and 18th in the world in 2023.

Novak Djokovic was disqualified from the 2020 US Open after accidentally hitting a line judge with a ball and at the 2023 French Open Miyu Kato and Aldila Sutjiadi were defaulted from the women’s doubles after a ball hit by Kato hit a girl of dance

Also in 2023, Australian tennis player Marc Polmans was disqualified from the final qualifying round at the Shanghai Masters after hitting a ball in the face of the chair umpire.

According to the BBCthe Canadian Denis Shapovalov was defaulted hit the referee with a ball during a 2017 Davis Cup match against Great Britain, while in 2012, Argentine tennis player David Nalbandian was suspended for after injuring a line judge hit a billboard on his instinct.