• ATP World Tour Finals

Federer and Wawrinka hit out at umpire for part in O2 row

ESPN staff
November 19, 2014
Federer and Wawrinka: 'We're friends, not enemies'

Roger Federer has criticised umpire Cedric Mourier for revealing that it was Federer's wife, Mirka, who was heckling Stan Wawrinka during the Swiss pair's semi-final at the ATP World Tour Finals.

Federer had saved three match points in the 10th game of the deciding set and the match was poised at 5-5 and deuce in game 11 when Wawrinka gestured to Federer's box asking that they be quiet in between serves. Mirka is then reported to have called Wawrinka a "cry-baby".

Mourier has since told Swiss website 20 Minutes: "I noticed Stan was getting irritated when he was at the same end as Roger's team. I asked him what had happened. He said: 'She talked to me.' And I realised he was upset with Roger's wife."

Roger Federer and Stan Wawrinka were in good spirits in a pre-Davis Cup final news conference on Tuesday © Getty Images
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The interview was questioned by both Federer and Wawrinka, who are in Lille ahead of Switzerland's Davis Cup final against France this weekend.

"The umpire is not allowed to do an interview in the first place," Federer told BBC Sport. "If he mentions my wife's name or not, it doesn't matter."

Wawrinka also questioned Mourier's participation and suggested he had not handled the match well at all.

"I don't think the umpire was doing great job," he said. "As you can see also at the beginning of the third set with the overrule [Mourier wrongly changed a line judge's decision but Federer failed to hear his intervention] and everything, it was quite a mess already."

After the match, the players were ushered into a makeshift gym at the O2 Arena to settle their differences.

When asked for details on what happened behind closed doors, Federer said: "We had a conversation. Everything's totally relaxed about the situation. We're old enough. I just wanted to see if there was any hard feelings because it was probably one of the loudest moments of the match, around 5-4, 5-5 score [in the final set], clearly a lot of noise.

"Like I said, there are no hard feelings whatsoever. We are friends, not enemies. But obviously it was maybe one of those moments, heat-of-the-moment situations."

Wawrinka added: "Little things can happen. But for us it's not that important. We talked about it just afterwards so that we would make sure it wouldn't become important."

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