WASHINGTON — Benoit Paire caused quite a racket at the Citi Open, repeatedly spiking and throwing his equipment until the crowd booed him off the court.
The French tennis player displayed not even a hint of joie de vivre in the late going of his 6-3, 3-6, 6-2 loss on Tuesday to Cyprus’ Marcos Baghdatis, the 2010 runner-up at the hard-court tuneup for the US Open and the 2006 runner-up at the Australian Open.
After tumbling at the end of a point in the next-to-last game, Paire sat on the ground and slammed his racket four times, breaking it. Then he rose to walk to the sideline for the changeover and tossed the worthless frame.
When he got to his bench, he knocked it over. Next, he threw another racket.
Baghdatis — famous for his own viral racket-smashing episode — went over to chat, perhaps to try to calm Paire down. Didn’t work at all. Paire wound up carrying two mangled rackets and tossing them onto the middle of the court, leaving a ball kid to collect them.
Soon enough, without much resistance from Paire, Baghdatis completed his win. Paire threw his racket one more time, for good measure, on the way to meeting Baghdatis at the net for a polite embrace.