Liam Broady, who secured a stunning two-set comeback to beat Marinko Matosevic earlier on in the day, has been fined £2,00 pounds for swearing repeatedly during his tense five-set victory in the first day of the Wimbledon tournament this year.
The 21-year-old Brit, who was not expected to prevail over his opponent, swore repeatedly on the court in frustration when he was losing plenty of points in quick succession, as his Australian competitor did well to keep him on his toes and played his part in what proved to be a rather entertaining encounter between two men with nothing to lose.
Broady has said the sport's top stars are let off lightly when they swear on court, by umpires who are too intimidated to sanction them for their behaviour - especially with crowds in which many families and children come and avidly watch tennis such as Wimbledon.
An example of this, was when Serena Williams nearly landed herself in hot water during her enthralling French Open final victory over Lucie Safarova, who was valiant in defeat and did well to annoy the 33-year-old American with consistent returns and smart forehand winners. She swore time-after-time, and only received a warning from the match umpire, which came as a surprise to the Roland Garros crowd, it must be said.
Broady totalled £47,000 in winnings as a result of the victory, and is scheduled to face 16th seed David Goffin in his second round match later this week.
He stated: "Emotions run high when you're on court and I deserved the code violation, I was swearing quite a lot at the back, but I thought no-one would hear it.
I just said to him [the umpire] there are guys who do it on Centre Court much worse, they shout at the top of their voices and they get nothing. It's really strange sometimes to see guys like that get away with it. I think maybe sometimes the umpires are intimidated by them and don't give it to them, but I deserved it. But it's not right to do it obviously in front of a couple of thousand people, especially when there's young kids in the crowd."