World No 3 Jessica Pegula had a good laugh watching the comical Rafael Nadal and ball kid scene as she jokingly remarked she “would be freaking out” if something like that happened to her. On Monday, Nadal kicked off his Australian Open campaign with a four-set win over Jack Draper.
But the highlight of the match came in the first set when Nadal told the chair umpire that “a ball kid took my racket.” A ball kid mistakenly took the wrong racket to the stringer and the rest was comedy. “Ok I would be freaking out (the face with tears of joy emoji),” Pegula tweeted.
Ok I would be freaking out ð https://t.co/rnA4uEzYiB — Jessie Pegula (@JLPegula) January 16, 2023
Pegula found funny the Nadal-ball kid situation
The Nadal and ball kid scene quickly went viral and Eurosport’s Barbara Schett asked the Spaniard to explain what really happened.
“Not distracting, just a funny situation! Normally, I have the numbers of the racquet under control, so I said ‘I need the stringer’ – but I needed the stringer to look at the other racquets. So he [the ball kid] picked up my racquet I was ready to play [with].
But okay, he took it and no problem at all!” Nadal told Schett. Meanwhile, Pegula made an outstanding start to her Australian Open campaign. In the Australian Open first round, Pegula destroyed Jaqueline Cristian 6-0 6-1. Pegula came out firing as she broke Cristian three times and didn’t allow the Romanian a single break point to pretty dominantly win the first set.
After easily winning the first set, Pegula faced three break points in the first game of the second set but she saved them all to avoid going down by an early break. Then, Pegula broke Cristian in the second game to go up by a set and a break.
Cristian finally got on the board when she served out the fourth game but that didn’t change much as Pegula broke the Romanian again in the sixth game and served out for the match in the following game.
