Gut Check

Jannik Sinner puked during his Rome semifinal. The Upchucker's Club is the least exclusive in tennis.

Jannik Sinner during his Rome semifinal versus Daniil Medvedev Friday (Tennis TV via Sportskeeda)

Jannik Sinner bent over in the corner of Campo Centrale Friday night in his Rome semifinal against Daniil Medvedev. Only the cameraman next to him knows for sure, but it looked like the world No. 1 was getting sick. Certainly close enough. He wouldn’t talk about it in the press conference afterward.

“I cannot answer this question,” he said in Italian when asked for specifics on his ailment.

Deep in the second set, Sinner struggled physically, breathing so heavily and rapidly that some observers, including Flavia Pennetta, speculated about an anxiety attack. Sinner took an injury timeout in the third set for a leg massage, sparking cramp talk. He eventually won the match.

For tennis fans, the No. 1 player puking on court isn’t news. It’s a footnote, like when someone pulls off a tweener passing shot. Perhaps decorum compels us to overlook barf breaks. More likely, it happens so often that it barely registers.

We should stop to think about this for a minute. What other sport routinely pushes its athletes to the point of spilling their guts during the competition? Endurance races, sure. But even professional eaters don’t vom as often as tennis players.

Sinner wasn’t the first to toss his biscotti in Rome. Hamad Medjedovic experienced the unfortunate rite of passage on Monday during his third-round match versus Mariano Navone. Three hours in, he retreated to the backstop and heaved the contents of his stomach onto the red clay. It was so— how to put this delicately?—cascading that Sky Sports apologized for airing it.

Coco Gauff in Madrid last month (David Ramos/Getty Images)

It’s common enough that any longtime tennis fan can recall a player getting sick mid-match. The famous incident is Pete Sampras’s series of hurls during his 1996 US Open quarterfinal against Alex Corretja, but there are scads of others. Two weeks ago, it was Coco Gauff succumbing to food poisoning on the court. Carlos Alcaraz spewed in his Australian Open semifinal this year. Oscar Otte puked his way through qualifying at the 2021 US Open. Ask Alexander Zverev about his sick days and he’ll have to ask which one you mean, last year in Halle or 2021 in Cincinnati.

Long matches in the heat are the primary culprit, but there are other factors, such as the toll that traveling takes on the body. Sometimes it’s a conditioning issue. Sometimes nerves. A stomach bug. A combination.

In Sampras’s case, arguably the most famous for the drama and stakes, he also had to deal with millions of eyeballs. He wrote about it in his biography, A Champion’s Mind. “Shit, I’m going to throw up. I’m going to throw up, in front of the entire world!” he was thinking.

Pete Sampras at the 1996 US Open

Here’s the even crazier part: In all of the cases mentioned in this story, the players didn’t just soldier on. They won.

Whatever it is, and wherever it happens (the flower beds, the tunnel, the towel, the back of the court), it’s something we take for granted in tennis, how often a player takes the queasy way out.