Daniil Medvedev aims to apologize to the fan he accidentally hit in the face with a ball.
Richard PagliaroOctober 5, 20262 minute read
By Richard Pagliaro | Monday, October 5, 2026
Photo credit: Screen Shot
Daniil Medvedev hit himself out of Beijing after hitting a fan in the face.
Former No. 1 Medvedev was trailing Novak Djokovic 7-5, 5-3 when he lost a point then belted the ball toward the back wall. The ball cleared the wall and hit a fan in the left eye leaving him slumped over clutching his eye in apparent pain before security and a fellow fan helped him leave the arena.
Chair umpire Mohamed Lahyani consulted both Medvedev and the supervisor before the third-seeded Russian was officially disqualified, sending Djokovic into a record-extending seventh Beijing final on a perfect 33-0 China Open record.
🚨The moment when Medvedev got disqualified at the @ChinaOpen. https://t.co/5GllzQvZsG
— José Morgado (@josemorgado) October 5, 2026
Afterward, Medvedev said there was no malice in his strike. Medvedev, who did not protest the disqualification, called it a “100 percent accident” and said he hopes to apologize to the fan in person if he’ll accept it.
“Terribly sorry to the spectator, first of all. I’m trying to get in touch with him, if he wants it,” Medvedev told the media in Beijing afterward. “Hopefully I can apologize in person and see how he feels.
“I mean, 100% accident. You can see that I didn’t hit the ball in anger. Actually I do a lot of bad things, but usually ball abuse is not my thing.
“The ball was bouncing back, so I tried to, like, just hit it anywhere, so it doesn’t go out from the court.
When I saw the result, I mean, I felt horrible because, again, I don’t think I was ever close to such situation. The most important, I hope that he’s okay ’cause you never know with these types of situations.”
The match-ending incident may well have prompted flashbacks for Djokovic, who was bounced out of the 2020 US Open after inadvertently hitting a lineswoman in the throat with a stray ball he tried to fire off the back wall during his match vs. Pablo Carreno Busta.
