Andy Roddick berates chair umpire, apologizes on Twitter

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Andy Roddick berated the chair umpire with expletives during his match against Brazil’s Thomas Bellucci at the Australian Open today, and then tweeted an apology.

He won the match 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 but yelled at the umpire and refused to shake the umpire’s hand, which is common courtesy after any match.

Roddick thought he had a victory on his first match point when the ball was ruled out by umpire Fergus Murphy. But it was challenged by Bellucci, and the Hawkeye system that is used to challenge calls showed the ball was in (by a fraction of an inch).

Roddick waited until after the match to angrily tell the umpire that he would have gone for the ball if he had known it was in.

‘I’m standing there with my racket back -- don’t you think I’m going to ... hit it?’’ Roddick shouted, adding a second profanity at the end. ‘It’s not your job to predict if I’m going to hit it. It’s your job to decide if I could hit it.’’

Roddick closed out the match on his second match point. Then he reviewed the incident on video -- and had a slight change of heart.

‘I was more wrong than I thought I was out on court,’’ he said in his postmatch news conference. ‘That being said, it was very close.

‘I thought I was going to be 100% right.’’

Roddick later tweeted: ‘Apologies for the language today folks hopefully most kids were asleep by the time I went off ...... my bad.’’

He also apologized for the handshake snub, tweeting: ‘also did not realize that i didnt shake the umpires hand we were mid argument and i guess it didnt happen not a conscious decision.’

-- Debbie Goffa

Graphic: Screen grab from Andy Roddick’s Twitter page