Tennis player Daniel Altmaier punts racket into crowd, shockingly avoids disqualification

Following the news of Arkansas ending their tennis teams funding, Dan says that if he were a coach who was making $10+ million he would tell the university to take millions to him as he couldn't see other sports fold while one coach was making an absurd amount

There is a rather distinct line in tennis that players can't cross when it comes to letting out frustrations. Kicking your racket into the crowd would constitute as crossing said line, yet somehow, Germany’s Daniel Altmaier came away relatively unscathed.

During the second set of his quarterfinal matchup against American Tommy Paul in the Hamburg Open on Thursday, Altmaier threw his racket onto the court after Paul broke his serve.

Daniel Altmaier throws his racket on the ground. Photo: Christian Charisius/dpa (Photo by Christian Charisius/picture alliance via Getty Images) (Christian Charisius/picture alliance via Getty Images)

Tennis players throw and destroy their rackets all the time, but Altmaier took things a significant step further.

With his racket bouncing back toward him after ricocheting off his bench, the German decided to kick his racket. The racket made its way back to him a second time, and he elected to deliver just one more kick for good measure, which sent the piece of hardware a couple of rows into the crowd.

The gentleman who caught the racket and casually tossed it back to the 27-year-old player didn't think too much of the situation, and the same goes for the chair umpire, Fergus Murphy.

Murphy did issue Altmaier a code violation for racket abuse, but did not issue him a default, which is immediate disqualification from the match.

Daniel Altmaier kicks his racket on the court. The racket flies into the audience. Photo: Christian Charisius/dpa