Pressure Too Much for One Australian Open Ballboy to Handle

Published on: 19th January, 2010 @ 2:21 pm by JeffG

Geez I feel bad for this kid.  Not the diligent ballboy in the picture here.  No, I’m referring to the ballboy in the story.  But talk about your all-time embarrassing moments.  It’ll take a lot of years, some intense therapy, and plenty of recreational drugs for the poor kid to get over what happened to him.

The match between two guys I’ve never heard of, Belgian Christophe Rochus and American Donald Young, was delayed for 40 minutes.  The reason?  One of the ballboys pissed his pants right there on the court.

Was the kid nervous, sick or drunk?  And why the hell did it take 40 minutes to clean up the mess, and replace the now permanently scarred ballboy?  Do the Australians not believe in the magic of paper towels?

“The ball kid peed on himself. It was unfortunate,” Young said.  “It took a while to replace him. Then they had to put the sawdust down, or whatever you put down when somebody throws up.  Then they had to use the blower (to dry the court) but the blower had no gas in it, so that took even more time.”

Wow.  Sawdust?  A blower?  Where did this guy piss himself–center court?  Because then I could understand why all the fuss to clean up the mess.  But if it were on the sidelines, couldn’t they just lay down a towel and resume play?

As for the kid, hopefully this incident doesn’t end up on YouTube or something.  That would be a life ruiner.  It’s bad enough that Internet douchebags like myself will take advantage of this kid’s poor bladder control for a few cheap laughs.  At least he can retain his anonymity, and what’s left of his dignity.

For now anyway.

[The Age via Deadspin, Image via Wikipedia]

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