Maria Sakkari angrily told Yulia Putintseva ‘nobody likes you’ in a heated confrontation at the Bad Homburg Open. Tensions flared as they shook hands after the Greek star won a tense match 7-5 7-6.
Putintseva appeared annoyed by Sakkari’s behaviour, although it is unclear exactly what had irked the Kazakhstani player. Much of the disagreement was inaudible as music blared from the stadium’s speaker system. Putintseva said something that Sakkari clearly believed to be objectionable, as the 29-year-old looked shocked and then demanded: “What?!”
Gesturing with her arms out wide, Putintseva was perhaps upset by Sakkari’s reaction to winning an epic tiebreaker. She then kept gesturing for her rival to walk away, with Sakkari following her opponent to her chair after shaking the umpire’s hand.
Putintseva shouted “leave me alone” as Sakkari placed her fingers on her lips. In a bizarre incident, Sakkari pointed around the stadium and declared: “Nobody likes you!”
Sakkari kept repeating “nobody likes you” and then seemed to accuse Putintseva of not looking her in the eye as they shook hands at the net. “Thank you very much,” Sakkari insincerely said to her rival as fans started to notice the argument, with several shouting: “Ooooh!”
Putintseva responded by sarcastically bowing to Sakkari as she walked away from the court, with the victor continuing to shout in her direction. The umpire attempted to calm the argument, but to no avail.
Sakkari was jokingly asked in her on-court interview whether she would be joining Putintseva for dinner. She responded: “I don’t think she’s going to invite me for dinner for the rest of our lives. But I don’t care, to be honest. I have very good friends and I will go to dinner with them. Let me leave it there and say I have plenty of respect for her as a player, but that’s it.”
Having recently rekindled her form, Sakkari says she is now happier than she was when she was the world No. 3. Speaking in April, the world No. 86 told the Madrid Open’s media team: “I keep saying to people that are around me that I’m happier now, even though I’m 89th in the world than I was when I was [number] three.
“Because I feel like those months that I was away, I worked on myself. I worked on myself on not caring that the other players are in Asia or they’re playing the finals and I’m not there. I’m just super happy to be back on the tour. And that’s going to give me a lot of strength for the next few years.”
Content Source: www.express.co.uk