Tennis player loses match after serving the ball off her own head on match point

(Twitter)

Kiki Bertens fell to Kirsten Flipkens in unfortunate fashion over the weekend when, on match point, the ball hit her in the head on her own serve.

Playing in the International Premier Tennis League (IPTL), Bertens found herself with second serve down 6-3 in a second set tiebreaker. Under IPTL rules, once a ball is tossed into the air for a serve, the serving motion must be completed.

This, then, meant that Bertens had no choice but to try to serve despite her poor toss. The problem was that Bertens hesitated — clearly forgetting about the IPTL rule and planning to bail on the toss.

When she remembered, the ball was well past its highest point and the entire service motion was awkward.

She swung, missed, and the ball hit her on the head. Double fault.

The crowd laughed, and the match was over.

Even more cruelly, the IPTL is a team event, and Bertans-Flipkens was the decider. This meant that Bertans' team (the defending champs) was eliminated because of this bad serve.

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