Astra Sharma lashes out at chair umpire and WTA supervisor after scoring blunder contributes to first round loss

Australian tennis player Astra Sharma was the victim of a major blunder at the hands of the chair umpire during her first round match against Giulia Gatto-Monticone at the WTA 250 Copa Colsanitas event in Colombia on Wednesday.

Sharma and Gatto-Monticone had split the first two sets and were tied at 1-1 in the third set when umpire Luis David Armenta Castro made the critical error. The Australian had won the first two points of the third game. At 0-30, Castro got off his chair to check a ball mark on a call that went in Sharma’s favour. However, instead of calling the score 0-40 in Sharma’s favour as it should have been, the chair umpire called the score 30-15 in Gatto-Monticone’s favour.

Sharma lost the next point and while the score should have been 15-40, Castro called it 40-15 for Gatto-Monticone. The Australian won the next point and would have broken her opponent’s serve, but the umpire called it 40-30 in Gatto-Monticone’s favour.

The Italian won the next point and the umpire called the game in her favour, leaving Sharma perplexed.

From there, Sharma appeared to lose her focus in the match and went on to lose the third set 6-1.

Gatto-Monticone, who came through the qualifying draw, completed the 4-6, 7-5, 6-1 win to advance to the second round where she will meet the fifth seed Tamara Zidansek.

Later, Sharma took to Twitter to express her outrage at the umpire’s error. The Australian was further infuriated by the response she received from the WTA supervisor on-site.

Sharma claimed that the supervisor told her that she should pay more attention to the score in her matches in the future.

There’s actually no excuse for this ridiculous mistake by the umpire and for the supervisor to defend it and blame the player for not focusing on the score is disgusting. Shame on you! So sick of umpires being a contributing factor to the outcome of matches 🤦‍♀️ https://t.co/MVQ6CDLcpG

— Ellen Perez (@EllenPerez95) April 6, 2021

Opponent and the ref claimed I had made three errors and therefore since I couldn’t remember how I won points I wasn’t allowed to delay play… I was confused, I asked them to talk to the line umpire who had called at least three of her balls long and he said they had rotated

— Astra Sharma (@astrasharma) April 6, 2021