French Open bans alcohol in stands after fan spits at player

ROLAND GARROS — French Open organisers have banned fans from drinking in the stands after David Goffin was spat at by a fan on Tuesday.

Goffin beat Frenchman Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard in five sets on Court 14 but was furious afterwards with the partisan crowd, claiming one even spat chewing gum at him.

As a result, supporters will still be allowed to drink alcohol “in the alleys” between courts and on the concourse of the stadiums, but will not be able to sit with a drink in their seats.

Tournament director Amelie Mauresmo also says they have “upgraded” security measures and told umpires to be stricter with the crowd during the match.

“The umpires are really going to be even more strict to further respect to the players and respect the game,” Mauresmo said.

“This is something that we’re not going to tolerate, to overstep these two things. That’s for sure. So umpires have quite an important role in this matter.

“And definitely in terms of security, we’re going to try to see which people is maybe making [trouble]… because I think it’s a few individuals at some point that are overstepping.

“[Security personnel will] try to calm them down or or they go out. If they go too far, they go out.”

However, Mauresmo did say that they had not been able to identify the person who spat at Goffin and that there had been no ejections so far during the tournament.

She added: “We’ve tried to gather yesterday information on what happened and how we can do the things so these kind of new rules are from this morning. So we’ll see how it goes.

“We are happy that people are very enthusiastic about watching tennis, about being part of the matches, about feeling emotions and showing emotions. But yes, definitely there are steps that they shouldn’t go further [than].

“I don’t want to be negative and I’m an optimist. I’m really [hoping] to see that people are going to react in a good way and that it’s going to be okay, and if it’s not, we will take other measures.”