To pee or not to pee?

WATCHING serial top 10 offenders abusing medical timeouts to break the momentum of their respective opponents, it’s laughable that World No 6 Casper Ruud has received an unprecedented code violation for not going to the toilet during a toilet break.

The rules have recently been rewritten to eradicate the above; however, one umpire’s dilemma matches Hamlet’s: To pee or not to pee, has become a loaded question. According to Patrick Murphy, after the second set against Roberto Bautista Agut, Ruud asked for a toilet break, but instead changed his clothes without actually availing himself.

“You’re allowed three minutes to

pee and an additional two minutes to change your clothes, but you didn’t use the toilet, which is unsportsmanlike.”

Ruud’s retort was he wanted to change his underwear, and where was he supposed to do that if not in the toilet? He should have said he tried, but froze, as Norwegian streams are prone to do.

Fortunately, this bizarre default only spurred Ruud on. With a fine burning a hole in his pocket, Ruud played flawless tennis against an in-form Felix Auger Aliassime to silence the Canadian crowd and send the Canadian No 1 packing, and the stoic Norwegian advanced to the semis.

Meanwhile, Australian star Nick Kyrgios also weighed in on toilet breaks, berating the umpire in his quarter-final for allowing Polish Hugo Hurkacz an extended one.

Having lost the first set and clawed back the second in a hard-fought tie break, the momentum was with Kyrgios, who’d won nine points on the trot. After a magnificent performance the previous day, in which he’d dispatched World No 1 Daniil Medvedev, from a set down, Kyrgios complained while awaiting Hurkacz’s return that “I’m not a f ***** g machine that you can switch on and off”.

In this instance, the Australian did switch off completely. It was more a case of throwing the third set away than Hurkacz winning in swashbuckling style. It is a flaw of the enigmatic Kyrgios to self destruct from a position of ascendancy.

Ironically, after his surge to the Wimbledon finals, he decided he had to capitalise on the “fear factor”.

“You have a window of opportunity when other players are more wary of you because you’ve made it to a Major Final and you have to ride that wave.” Ride the wave he did, winning the Citi Open Masters in Washington and playing superbly aggressive tennis to beat a current No 1 for only the second time in his career, until he allowed a tactical toilet break to trip his indomitable mindset.

That will erode any benefit the fear factor helped instil in his opponents, going into the US Open. Rafa Nadal, on hearing the news he could imminently be reinstated as No 1 after Medvedev’s premature demise in Montreal, has announced he’s playing the Cincinnati Masters, the precursor to Flushing Meadow. This after a week ago withdrawing from Montreal on account of niggling injury and warning he might be a no-show for the US Open, suggests he’s also No 1 at sending up red herring smoke signals immediately prior to Majors.

Meanwhile, defending Canadian champion Camila Giorgio struck fear in the hearts of competitors on the eve of the US Open, thrashing US Open champion Emma Raducanu in round one in Montreal. The hard-hitting Italian World No 29, who plays high-risk tennis has beaten seven out of nine top 10 players she has faced of late.

So too Olympic champion Belinda Bencic, who made short work of former Wimbledon champions Serena Williams and Garbine Muguruza before being stopped in her tracks by unseeded Brazilian, Haddad Maia.

This cemented Williams’ chances of picking up a 24th singles Slam at the US Open are dead and she is performing an extended final farewell tour.