Tennis star Rodger Federer won his first-round match against Alejandro Fall 6-3, 6-3, 6-4. After the match there was a scary incident. A young fan made it onto the court and tried to take a selfie with Federer. Federer walked off the court but didn’t make an effort to separate himself from the fan. Federer was furious this happened. According to ESPN he said, “I’m not happy about it, obviously not one second I’m happy about it. It happened [Saturday] in the practice, too. And today on center court, where you would think this is a place where nobody can come on, just wanders on and nothing happens”.
This isn’t the first time he had to deal with fans on the court. On Saturday, after a practice session he was approached on the court by fans that wanted an autograph. In 2009 during the final when he won the French Open, a fan came onto the court. This is the third incident just for Federer. Where is the security?
Security is there to prevent people from coming onto the court and to protect the players. When a person comes on the field, athletes don’t know their intent. The worse case scenario is that they could have a weapon which could harm the competitor. That happened in 1993 when Monica Seles was stabbed during a changeover during a tennis match in Hamburg, Germany. Since 1993, professional tennis had increased security.
Security needs to be tightened up even more. They can’t have fans running onto the court during matches or even at the end of them. Federer hopes that the French Open will increase security so players feel safe. He said, “So I definitely think this is [a change] that something needs to happen quickly. But obviously [I] want this to happen immediately. Normally I only speak on behalf of myself, but in this situation I think I can speak on behalf of all the players, that that’s where you do your job, that’s where you want to feel safe. But nothing happened, so I’m relieved. But clearly it wasn’t a nice situation to be in.”
They are lucky Federer wasn’t seriously hurt. The French Open seems to have problems with fans storming the court. They need to have more protection for the players. Hopefully, the French Open has learned from this event and will beef up security.
What can the French Open do to make sure fans can’t get close to the tennis players during or even after a match?
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