Hanescu hit with £10,000 fine for spitting
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Your support makes all the difference.Victor Hanescu, the 6ft 6in Romanian who defaulted from a third-round match in semi-darkness on Friday evening after spitting and swearing at spectators who had been barracking him, has been fined $7,500 (£4,900) by the Wimbledon referee, Andrew Jarrett, for unsportsmanlike conduct and a further $7,500 for "not using his best efforts" at the end of the match.
Hanescu walked off court at 0-3 in the fifth set of his match against Germany's Daniel Brands after several times deliberately foot-faulting. His request to the British umpire, Kim Craven, to halt the match because of bad light had been turned down. The clash with spectators occurred at 0-2 and four men were later arrested and ejected from the grounds.
Nicolas Mahut, the loser in the first-round match with John Isner which went to 70-68 in the fifth, lost in the doubles yesterday. He and Arnaud Clément were beaten 7-6 6-4 3-6 7-6 by Britain's Colin Fleming and Ken Skupski. Chris Eaton and Dominic Inglot then knocked out the top seeds and champions for the past two years, Daniel Nestor and Nenad Zimonjic, 7-5 5-7 7-6 6-7 8-6.
Three Frenchmen won in the singles. Julien Benneteau beat the Italian Fabio Fognini 6-4 6-1 4-6 6-3 achieve his best Wimbledon showing. Paul-Henri Mathieu also ground out a four-set win, three of them tie-breaks, in getting past Holland's Thiemo de Bakker, the conqueror of Isner, 7-6 7-6 6-7 6-4. This represents a best showing for Mathieu, who had won only two of his 11 matches at Wimbledon before this year.
The son of a dentist, Mathieu might have wished his father was a surgeon, since he has undergone multiple knee operations and this year has struggled with groin and further knee injuries.
The fastest and most impressive of the French brigade was the 10th-seeded Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who ended the run of the last remaining qualifier, Germany's Tobias Kamke, 6-1 6-4 7-6 in an hour and 37 minutes. Tsonga and Benneteau will meet in tomorrow's fourth round.
There was disappointment for Jérémy Chardy, who joined Gilles Simon among the losers when he fell to the ninth seed from Spain, David Ferrer, 7-5 6-3 4-6 3-6 7-5. Chardy, having lost the first two sets, came back so strongly that he levelled the match and led 4-2 in the decider, only to fall away.
Perhaps the most impressive win of the day was posted by Sweden's Robin Soderling. His 6-4 6-2 7-5 demolition of the Brazilian left-hander Thomaz Bellucci was his third straight-sets win in succession and came on the back of inspired serving. Poor Bellucci salvaged only one point from the Soderling serve in the second set.
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