Clara Tauson retires from the match in protest against chair umpire

1 November, 2022

19-year-old Danish Tennis player Clara Tauson ended up retiring in the middle of her W80 semifinal clash in Poitiers in order to protest against a flurry of controversial and baffling decisions made by the chair umpire during the match.

19-year-old Danish Tennis player Clara Tauson ended up retiring in the middle of her W80 semifinal clash in Poitiers in order to protest against a flurry of controversial and baffling decisions made by the chair umpire during the match.

The Danish teenager had also defeated several players like Cristina Bucsa, Anastasia Tikhonova, and Jodie Burrage to reach the last four of the competition where she took on Petra Marcinko of Croatia. As mentioned before, Tauson decided to call it quits with the scoreline 3-6, 6-1, 2-1 in favor of her opponent.

She was continuously outraged and unhappy by the referee’s decisions and calls throughout the match and she even took a toilet break in the middle of the contest to get her frustration under control. Later in the match, she also received two warnings for time violations which probably pushed her towards withdrawing from the contest altogether.

Judging from the footage of the match as well as the replays, it seemed quite clear that at least a fair few, if not all the decisions, taken by the chair umpire were unjust and unfair to Tauson. 

It is believed that the Danish Tennis player was unhappy with at least nine major decisions, all of them arriving in the second and third sets (six in the second set, and three in the third set before she decided to withdraw). The line judge also made several wrong calls and despite his errors, the chair umpire opted not to interfere in the proceedings.

Clara Tauson rose to fame following a wonderful campaign in the tennis circuit last year. The teenager won the Lyon Open by defeating the likes of Camila Giorgi and Paula Badosa, and the Luxembourg Open, where she got the better of Marketa Vondrousova and Jelena Ostapenko in the semifinals and final respectively. She had also managed to reach the Courmayeur Ladies Open final, where she suffered a defeat at the hands of Donna Vekic.

She has also won three other titles in 2021: the WTA Chicago 125 where she defeated Emma Raducanu in the final, and two ITF tournaments — in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, and Altenkirchen, Germany. Her performances saw her climb to a career-high World No. 33 in the WTA rankings last year.