A tennis star was reduced to tears at the US Open after discovering her ex-boyfriend had showed up uninvited during a match.
Czech ace Karolína Muchová paused play during her game against 35-year-old Romanian veteran Sorana Cîrstea last week (August 28) as she broke down in tears, leading to British umpire Alison Hughes asking her 'are you okay?'.
The 29-year-old was down four to one with the sixth game being tied at 30:30 when she noticed that her former partner was in the crowd, resulting in her breaking down in emotion.
However, after recomposing herself, she went on to steal the match, winning it by a score of 7:6 (0), 6:7 (3), and 6:4, after almost three hours.
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At the time, she didn't let on that her ex-boyfriend had caused her distress, but after the game she opened up about the situation to Czech outlets.
She told Radiožurnál: "There was something there. I'm happy with how I handled it. The first set was a little harder for me to concentrate, but then I got back into the rhythm and fought for every ball."
She went on to provide more detail about what that 'something' was.
"It's not about tennis, so I don't like to talk about it. But my ex-boyfriend, who sometimes appears in places where he shouldn't be and where I am, sat down opposite my bench," she explained to tenisovysvet.cz.
"So it scared me a little, but I asked him if he could leave. He didn't go, but then he left. It was hard for me to concentrate on tennis at that moment."
After bypassing Cîrstea in the second round, Muchová took on her fellow Czech compatriot Linda Nosková two days later, beating her to set up a round of 16, against Ukrainian Marta Kostyuk, today at 1 pm Eastern Time.
When asked after the game on Saturday (August 30) whether she is alright considering everything that happened two days earlier, she replied: "Yeah, I’m alright. I didn’t make any report, and everything is good."
She was then asked to comment on whether similar incidents may happen in the future, to which Muchová replied: "I mean, who knows, right? I don’t know."
It comes just months after British champion Emma Raducanu also broke down in tears during a match, this time in Wimbledon, after she spotted a man in the crowd who was convicted of stalking her in Dubai.
He was issued a restraining order against the 22-year-old, who was playing Muchová at the time.
Joe Yates