Rafael Nadal has broken his silence on the time violations he received during the US Open final against Daniil Medvedev.
It took less than two minutes for umpire Ali Nili to pull Nadal up for his slow speed of serve.
The world No 2 was broken in the opening game of the match and to make matters worse was warned about going over the permitted 25 seconds to deliver the ball.
To his credit, Nadal did not complain to the official after receiving the surprisingly quick penalty.
And the 19-time Grand Slam winner also remained focussed when he was docked a serve for again taking too long in the fifth set.
However, after spending almost five hours on court, Nadal feels there should be some leniency with the longer points.
“I will not be p****d off,” Nadal told Spanish radio station COPE.
“In fact if you saw me, I was not angry at any time.
“I think such and how the game was going and as I was playing, I think you could have had a little left hand when letting us recover between points, but it was not like that and I had to accept things as they come in.
“And although it would have seemed a little more logical than the referee would give us a little more time, especially after depending on what kind of points, but he is the one who has the floor up there and he makes the decisions.
“I wasn’t getting angry or losing energy in complaining. I was trying to avoid it.”
For European viewers the match went on way into the early hours of Monday morning.
But Nadal’s friends stayed up to cheer him on from the other side of the world.
“Many tell me they are sleepy and friends and people close to me say they are very ‘It’s been one of the most exciting finals without any doubt about the fact of how the game went’,” Nadal said.
“At the beginning I had it more or less on track and then there came a time when the game got very uphill.
“It made it an end of these that takes your breath away, but I ended up winning and I’m very happy.”