Daniil Medvedev saluted a rowdy Paris Masters crowd with his middle finger as he walked off the court a 6-4, 6-7 (4), 7-6 (2) loser to Grigor Dimitrov.
The Monte Carlo based fluent French speaker insisted that he was just “checking my nails” when he raised his hand into the air.
Spectators at the Bercy arena had been on Medvedev’s case throughout a tight second-round showdown, with Medvedev fighting off six match points before going down to defeat.
The notorious crowds at the venue got on his case for throwing late in the final set, with the jeers resulting in pauses as Medvedev told the chair he could not go on in the conditions.
He finally got down to business and later damned the obnoxious fans: “I have a lot of French friends, and they don’t seem to like very much this tournament.
“Maybe there is a reason. Me, generally, I played much better here without the crowd, so that’s all I can say (he won the crowd-free 2020 Covid edition).
“I don’t want to say bad things about this tournament in general. It’s just that it doesn’t work.
“Every match is the same, things like that happen.
“There are some tournaments to which I like to come back, and here, well, I have problems with the crowd. It happens.”
