Tennis
$50 000 - but no towel
2008-11-10 07:39
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Shanghai - France's Jo-Wilfried Tsonga picked up a cool $50 000 for his Tennis Masters Cup debut but was left furious when he could not get a towel between points.
Tsonga, 23, gesticulated and ranted at the Qi Zhong Stadium staff when they were slow to give him towels and balls during his loss to Russian Nikolay Davydenko.
"You say one time, two times, three times, and then you ask the other guy. The other guy looks around, so you have to say one time, two times, three times, and the towel comes," he said.
"Sometimes in this match I lost energy with that. Sometimes I had to fetch my towel myself. So for me it's maybe 10m more. But if you count at the end of the match, it's like one km."
The eight-man, $4.45m season finale is the most lucrative event on the circuit with an undefeated winner making $1.34m. Tsonga will walk away with $100 000 even if he loses all his group matches.
The players are living in the lap of luxury with monogrammed pillows at their five-star hotel, personal drivers and individual locker-rooms, while the 15 000-seat Qi Zhong Stadium was purpose-built and features a lotus-shaped retractable roof.
"We get treated unbelievably," Britain's Andy Murray said earlier.
Davydenko beat Tsonga 6-7 (6/8), 6-4 7-6 (7/0) and world number three Novak Djokovic downed Argentina's Juan Martin del Potro in the opening Gold Group matches on Sunday.
Top seed Roger Federer opens his bid for a third consecutive Masters Cup title against Gilles Simon of France and Murray is playing America's Andy Roddick in the Red Group later on Monday.