Novak Djokovic has had several run-ins with umpire Jaume Campistol (Image: Getty)
With speculation rife that tennis umpire Jaume Campistol is soon retiring, Express Sport runs through the times he’s had it out with Novak Djokovic on court.
Novak Djokovic isn’t one to keep his emotions bottled up, especially when Jaume Campistol is umpiring. In fact, the Serbian tennis legend has had several tense run-ins with the official who, rumour has it, is about to retire.
That said, the rumour, which was started by World No.5 Daniil Medvedev, is, as things stand, unsubstantiated. On Wednesday, in a bizarre social media post, Medvedev uploaded a photo of Campistol along with the caption: “Man a lot of fun memories on the tennis court [three laughing face emojis]. Wishing you a peaceful retirement.”
As far as Express Sport is aware, Campistol hasn’t retired, nor is he planning to. But as speculation surrounding this peculiar situation rumbles on, we thought we’d take a trip down memory lane and run through a couple of infamous occasions where Djokovic and Campistol clashed on court.
Djokovic vs Musetti
Djokovic, 37, had an angry exchange with Campistol during his Olympic semi-final victory over Lorenzo Musetti as recently as August. The 24-time Grand Slam champion was understandably tense as he closed in on the one major prize that had eluded him his entire career – an Olympic gold medal.
After receiving a second time violation during the match for taking too long to serve, the current World No.7 reacted with audible frustration, which Campistol interpreted as an obscenity. He then announced: “Code violation, audible obscenity,” prompting Djokovic to storm over to the umpire’s chair.
He then launched into an explosive tirade, and was heard telling the Spaniard: “You’re trying to do your job, you know how it is on court right? You recognise the right moment to do it.”
Novak Djokovic managed to recover and went on to clinch a straight sets victory, and insisted after the match that Campistol was wrong to issue him with an obscenity violation. “I didn’t swear at him, he thought I was, he gave me a warning and that’s fine,” he told reporters.
“He forgave me for something, but those are the rules. Are they ideal? They are not. I don’t know what happened rushes with serves, and between games. Some judges are more tolerant, some less, I’m not the only one who oversteps.”
Djokovic vs Thiem
The pair also clashed during the five set thriller between Djokovic and Dominic Thiem in the semi-final of the French Open in 2019. At the time, Djokovic had just one Rolland Garros title to his name, and was looking to close the gap on Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer in the all-time major titles list.
As he served to stay in the third set, Djokovic was handed a time violation by Campistol after going over the shot clock. In response, the Belgrade native asked the umpire not to call out the score before the crowd had died down, in order to delay the start of the shot clock.
Thiem went on to break Djokovic and clinch the third set, and the Serb let his frustrations get the better of him at the changeover. Sternly addressing Campistol, he said: “Can you tell me why you keep calling the score one second after the point is finished.”
