Nick Kyrgios captured nearly all the attention on a marathon Thursday in Rome with his racquet-throwing, dirt-kicking, chair-tossing, expletive-laden tantrum. That ended in him being defaulted from his match against Casper Ruud with a ball kid needing to retrieve the collapsed chair.
The incident set the stage almost poetically for a palate cleanser by Juan Martin del Potro, who would face Ruud later the same day. When a ball girl was jumping to pull a ball from the backcourt hedge, Del Potro, living up to his "gentle giant" nickname, used his 6'6" height to grab the ball with ease and hand it to his smiling helper.
