Alexander Bublik smashes racket five times and injures himself in wild outburst
Alexander Bublik cut his hand open after lashing out when he lost a close opening set at the Shanghai Masters. The No. 19 seed is up against 16th seed Brandon Nakashima in the third round, where he blew two set points to lose the opener 7-6(7) in a tiebreak. Bublik immediately slammed his racket to the ground five times, destroying it. He headed back to his bench for the changeover, kicking it before sitting down. And to top it off, he whacked the top of a drinks cooler with his hand, injuring himself.
There had been nothing separating the two men throughout the first set, and they went to a tiebreak. The Kazakh was the first to get a mini-break, and had two set points at 6-4, one coming on his own serve. But he couldn’t convert them, and dropped five of the next six points to lose the hour-long set.
Bublik had already been venting to his team after missing those set points, and when Nakashima ripped a winner to claim the set, the 19th seed smashed his racket repeatedly. “He’s going to need to find a way to calm down quickly,” commentator Nick Lester said. “That’s not pretty.”
Chair umpire John Blom announced a code violation warning for unsportsmanlike conduct for Bublik, whose hand had started bleeding. He covered it with a towel, and told the umpire that he would need the physio.
The 29-year-old also tried to tidy up around him, picking up a broken shard from the lid of the drinks cooler. The trainer soon came to the court to bandage up Bublik’s hand, and Blom told the crowd there would be a three-minute medical timeout.
While receiving the treatment, Bublik started ranting about the quality of Nakashima and other opponents he’d faced in recent weeks. “I cannot play against gods f***ing everywhere,” he muttered.
“It’s like everything is against me. Everything. Not a single ball. What am I supposed to do? Week after week, everything. In every match.”
Bublik still recovered to hold serve at the beginning of the second set. And he earned the first break of the match in the eighth game of set two, sealing it with a backhand winner. The nine-time title winner served it out 6-3 to force a decider.
The Kazakh got to know his opponent, Nakashima, at the recent Laver Cup, where they both represented Team World. They teamed up in doubles but lost to Team Europe’s Alexander Zverev and Casper Ruud.
Bublik even joked that he’d never heard Nakashima’s voice until they linked up at the Laver Cup. Speaking in Beijing days after the team event finished, he said: “Nakashima actually can speak, which surprised me a lot, and I told him that! Like, I never heard his voice in my life, and from the first day, he was on [the bench] there talking. He can speak, which was surprising to me. It was great, we had a really great experience.
