French tennis star Ugo Humbert is in some hot water after bizarrely checking his phone during a pivotal moment of his match with countryman Adrian Mannarino during Round 2 of the Open Occitanie in Montpellier on Wednesday.
The World No. 38 was up, 4-3, in the best-of-seven decider and about to serve when he halted the contest and walked over to his bag.
He quickly rifled through his belongings, nonchalantly picked up his phone, put it back down and then returned to play.
Humbert then lost the next four points and the match.
The Internet took over from there.
There is no word from Humbert or his camp about Wednesday’s incident, but given how the tiebreaker ended, and the fact that Humbert had already squandered away three match points in the set, it didn’t take long for tennis fans and bettors to start drawing a flimsy line to match-fixing.
With gambling scandals on the rise, and seemingly in the news every day, it’s no surprise that fans and bettors immediately jumped to the most nefarious of possible outcomes, especially since tennis has long been a hotbed for betting scandals.
That said, the overwhelming majority of those incidents happen on the lower circuits, well away from the public eye. And they almost always involve players who are scraping together a living on tour, not someone who has made north of $10 million in his career playing in a globally-broadcast tournament in his native country.
Match-fixers often get caught due to sloppiness, but it’s hard to imagine that anybody, let alone the 38th-best tennis player in the world, would be this absent-minded.
The most likely explanation is that Humbert heard his phone buzz or ring and went to silence it, which is still a double-fault in judgment.
There is no official word yet about an investigation, but you can be sure that the ATP will take a good, hard look at the incident, and it could lead to a fine for Humbert, as checking your phone in the middle of a match is obviously banned.
