{"id":15487,"date":"2026-06-29T16:14:38","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T16:14:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news678.top\/?p=15487"},"modified":"2026-06-29T16:14:38","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T16:14:38","slug":"bbc-pundit-criticises-wimbledon-star-over-gesture-towards-crowd-thats-not-a-good-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news678.top\/?p=15487","title":{"rendered":"BBC pundit criticises Wimbledon star over gesture towards crowd: \u2018That\u2019s not a good idea\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n
\n\t\t\"\"\t<\/div>
Jelena Ostapenko briefly became a Wimbledon villain (Picture: BBC)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jelena Ostapenko briefly became the villain of Wimbledon on day one of the Championships after clashing with the crowd during her first-round win over Harriet Dart.<\/p>\n

British tennis fans flocked to Court One on Monday afternoon hoping to cheer local favourite Dart on to a rare Wimbledon win.<\/p>\n

But the world number 151, who was handed a wildcard to play in the singles draw, lost the opening set 6-3 to former French Open champion Ostapenko.<\/p>\n

Dart began to mount a stirring comeback in the second, however, levelling the match much to the delight of a largely partisan crowd on Court One.<\/p>\n

The London-born 29-year-old also had some success in the third and drew raucous applause after breaking the Ostapenko serve after the Latvian threw in a poor double fault.<\/p>\n

Ostapenko sarcastically applauded the Wimbledon crowd as they cheered Dart’s break of serve and raised her racket to acknowledge what she may have considered unfair treatment.<\/p>\n

But Wimbledon legend Navratilova criticised Ostapenko’s reaction and said the experienced star should have ‘expected’ the crowd to be in Dart’s corner.<\/p>\n

\n
\n\t\t\"Day\t<\/div>
Ostapenko during her first-round match against Harriet Dart (Picture: Getty)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

‘Ostapenko is quite happy to pick a fight with this crowd,’ BBC commentator Chris Bradnam said. ‘She\u2019s\u00a0taking on over 12,000 in here.’<\/p>\n

Nine-time Wimbledon champion Navratilova then said: ‘Yeah,\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0not\u00a0a good idea for Ostapenko.<\/p>\n

‘They\u2019re\u00a0not\u00a0applauding\u00a0the fact she double faulted,\u00a0they\u2019re\u00a0applauding\u00a0the fact that Harriet Dart broke her and is back on serve. These days that kind of reaction is to be expected but I understand it can still be frustrating.’<\/p>\n

\n
\n\t\t\"\"\t<\/div>
Ostapenko during the changeover (Picture: Getty)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ostapenko regained her composure at the changeover and asserted her dominance when the match restarted, going on to win the deciding set 6-4.<\/p>\n

In her on-court interview, Ostapenko apologised to the crowd for getting a ‘little bit emotional’.<\/p>\n

‘I’m probably not the one who you wanted to win but thank you, it was a really nice atmosphere,’ she said.<\/p>\n

\n
\n\t\t\"The\t<\/div>
Wimbledon legend Martina Navratilova (Picture: Getty)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

‘Sorry if I was a little bit emotional but I feel like the first round is always tough especially when you face somebody from here.<\/p>\n

‘I was not playing my best but it really matters when you win the match not playing your best. She is a great player and played a great match.<\/p>\n

‘It was a rollercoaster but I’m really proud of myself. When I play somebody local or just somebody that the crowd is supporting, I feel like I’m angry in a good way and I just want to prove wrong that like, you guys are not supporting the right person.<\/p>\n

\n
\n\t\t\"Day\t<\/div>
Harriet Dart lost in the first round of Wimbledon (Picture: Getty)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

‘Not in this case because she is from here and this is a good crowd from here. I just wanted to prove that you guys should support me in the next match.’<\/p>\n

Dart’s Wimbledon opener was moved to Court One after British number one Emma Raducanu withdrew on the eve of the tournament.<\/p>\n

In another blow for British tennis fans, Jack Draper also pulled out just 24 hours before his first-round match against sixth seed Taylor Fritz.<\/p>\n

‘I’m devastated to share that I have had to withdraw from my first round match due to a recurrence of my arm injury,’ said Draper, who is coached by Sir Andy Murray.<\/p>\n

‘There have been a lot of painful moments in the last 12 months, but this one is definitely the absolute worst.’<\/p>\n

In yet another setback for British tennis, former semi-finalist Cameron Norrie was beaten in the first round by America’s Michael Zheng in five sets.<\/p>\n

For more stories like this,\u00a0check our sport page<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Follow Metro Sport for the latest news on Facebook,\u00a0<\/strong>Twitter<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Instagram<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Comment now<\/title><\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t<span class=\"share-bar-comments__label\">Comments<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<span><title>Add Metro as a Preferred Source on Google<\/title><\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t<span class=\"share-bar-preferred-source__label\">Add as preferred source<\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t<\/section>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/> BBC pundit criticises Wimbledon star over gesture towards crowd: \u2018That\u2019s not a good idea\u2019<br \/>\n<br \/>#BBC #pundit #criticises #Wimbledon #star #gesture #crowd #good #idea<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jelena Ostapenko briefly became a Wimbledon villain (Picture: BBC) Jelena Ostapenko briefly became the villain…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5443,2025,10162,5498,402,1309,10190,541,8283],"class_list":["post-15487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-bbc","tag-criticises","tag-crowd","tag-gesture","tag-good","tag-idea","tag-pundit","tag-star","tag-wimbledon"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/osta-1-4d83_1782749362.png",1200,630,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/osta-1-4d83_1782749362-150x150.png",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/osta-1-4d83_1782749362-300x158.png",300,158,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/osta-1-4d83_1782749362-768x403.png",640,336,true],"large":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/osta-1-4d83_1782749362-1024x538.png",640,336,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/osta-1-4d83_1782749362.png",1200,630,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/osta-1-4d83_1782749362.png",1200,630,false],"covernews-featured":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/osta-1-4d83_1782749362-1024x538.png",1024,538,true],"covernews-medium":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/osta-1-4d83_1782749362-540x340.png",540,340,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/news678.top\/?author=1"},"category_info":"<a href=\"https:\/\/news678.top\/?cat=6\" rel=\"category\">Sports<\/a>","tag_info":"Sports","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}