Kazakhstan’s Yulia Putintseva was forced to issue a public apology following her third round loss to Jasmine Paolini after she was slammed on social media for a disrespectful interaction with a U.S. Open ball girl. 

Video on social media showed the awkward moment Putintseva appeared to give the ball girl a cold shoulder during the second set of the 6-3, 6-4 loss on Saturday.

A visibly frustrated Putintseva stood motionless as the ball girl tossed her two tennis balls, letting each one bounce into her before finally making an attempt to catch the third. 

The interaction immediately drew fierce boos from the crowd, and an even fiercer reaction on social media. 

“Everyone should equally respect ball kids. They are also working hard. Respect,” one person wrote in a post on X. 

“​​Completely disrespectful behavior, she is a horrible role model,” another added.

“You can tell a lot about a person’s character by how they treat those below them,” another post read. 

Ben Shelton of the United States fist bumps the ball boy against Frances Tiafoe of the United States during their men’s singles third round match on day five of the 2024 U.S. Open at USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center on Aug. 30, 2024. (Mike Stobe/Getty Images)

NOVAK DJOKOVIC’S SHOCKING US OPEN LOSS ENDS INCREDIBLE 22-YEAR STREAK

The criticism prompted Putintseva to post an apology on her own social media. 

She explained that her anger was directed at her own performance and that she was “deep in my thoughts” when the awkward exchange took place. 

“I want to apologize to the ball girl for the way I was, when she was giving me balls. Honestly speaking it was not about her. I was really pissed at myself by not winning the game from the breakpoint and then got empty with my emotions and deep in my thoughts, that I was not even focusing on what’s going on and who gives me the ball… All the ball kids [were] doing amazing as always at the open.” 

Yulia Putintseva of Kazakhstan reacts against Jasmine Paolini of Italy during their Women’s Singles Third Round match on Day Six of the 2024 US Open at USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center on Aug. 31, 2024 in the Flushing neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York City. (Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)

Putintseva’s U.S. Open journey ended in the third round following a loss to Italy’s Jasmine Poalini. She moves on to the Round of 16, where she will face Karolina Muchova.

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Joey Bosa knew immediately. When he rushed the quarterback on the last rep of a joint practice with the Rams, he realized he broke his left hand. The Chargers’ star defensive end had no idea what would happen next.

“A million” thoughts started racing through Bosa’s mind. “Most of them,” he said three weeks later with a surgically repaired hand, “are negative.”

For the Chargers’ supposed new era, the training camp injury felt like unwelcome deja vu. After two injury-plagued seasons, the four-time Pro Bowl player’s health is one of the key components to orchestrating a turnaround in coach Jim Harbaugh’s return to the NFL, because with Bosa next to Khalil Mack, the Chargers have the most formidable edge-rushing duo in the league to anchor a defense trying to bounce back from a 5-12 season.

“We want to build on them; they’re strengths of our defense,” new defensive coordinator Jesse Minter told reporters during camp. “Let them affect the game, do things that they do really well and let them have their best years that they’ve had and try to let them thrive in our defense.”

Mack is coming off a career year. He recorded 17 sacks with 21 tackles for loss and earned his eighth Pro Bowl appearance in his second season with the Chargers.

Despite his production and feeling healthy as ever entering his 11th season, Mack accepted a pay cut in March. He and Bosa both reworked their contracts amid the team’s salary cap struggles with the belief that they’ll be paid back in full when it comes to what matters.

“I just want to win games,” Bosa said. “I just want to go out there and finally put together one of those seasons as a team that it’s like, we’re serious.”

The Chargers have played one playoff game in the last five years. Instead of building off the 2022 wild-card appearance, they collapsed with eight losses in their last nine games last season. The Chargers were 0-7 in games decided by three or fewer points.

Bosa played in just nine games because of foot, toe, hand and hamstring injuries. Coming off a 2022 season marred by a groin injury that limited him to five games, Bosa cobbled together 6½ sacks with 14 solo tackles last season. When he injured a foot in Week 11, Bosa tearfully covered his face with a towel as he was carted off the field in Green Bay.

Some around the NFL, Bosa said early in camp, might have forgotten about him. Minter hopes the new coaching regime can help the 2016 defensive rookie of the year reintroduce himself.

Chargers linebacker Tuli Tuipulotu chases after a play against the Kansas City Chiefs in January.

(Kyusung Gong / Associated Press)

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“I definitely think he’s got a little bit of a prove-it mentality,” Minter said. “Most great ones do, but sometimes it just grows even more when you go through some of your own adversity. So I’m really just excited to get him out there and allow him to do the things that he does really well, and I think that will positively impact our defense.”

The former Michigan coordinator knows about managing fearsome fronts. The Wolverines gave up the fewest yards per game (247) in the country last season en route to a 15-0 record and national championship. The 10.4 points they gave up per game were the fewest for a Big Ten defense since 1903.

And Minter did it without a star. No one on Michigan’s historic defense was a first-team All-American, and only lineman Kris Jenkins, who was drafted in the second round by the Cincinnati Bengals, earned multiple All-American honors.

Minter called having Mack and Bosa “a dream.” The defensive scheme emphasizes getting edge rushers up the field, Bosa said, the Chargers’ four-man front boasting offseason addition Bud Dupree and second-year pro Tuli Tuipulotu.

Tuipulotu, a former star at Lawndale High and USC, flourished as a rookie with increased playing time after Bosa’s injury. He was named to the Pro Football Writers Assn. all-rookie team with 53 tackles and 4½ sacks in 11 starts. Dupree led the Atlanta Falcons with 6½ sacks before arriving in free agency.

The edge rushers lead the way for a defense that also has star power in the secondary with safety Derwin James Jr., and cornerback Asante Samuel Jr., but the group lacks depth. The team added former Tennessee Titans starting defensive back Elijah Molden after camp to boost versatility and competitiveness in the secondary.

The pieces, Bosa said, appear to be coming together. He’s ready to show a final masterpiece.

“It doesn’t really matter how your offseason goes, how good you feel,” Bosa said. “It matters how you play on Sunday.”

“Normally, we don’t meet these kinds of teams,” Erling Haaland reflected on the third of his three goals on Saturday. “Normally, teams drop more, but West Ham needed a goal and the line was higher and I had space to go in behind.”

The thing is, it was Haaland who afforded Manchester City that extra option by scoring the two goals that obliged West Ham to change their approach in the first place.

For the first of them, he struck after City won the ball back high up the pitch, exposing a gaping hole as West Ham tried to play out from the back. “With space behind, he’s unstoppable,” said City manager Pep Guardiola. “There’s no central defender, not even with a gun… it’s impossible to stop him. He’s so fast, so powerful.”

For the second, City worked their way up the pitch patiently, as they usually have to do, and Haaland smashed in an emphatic finish — a half-chance, really — after a succession of intricate passes.

The moral of the story is that no matter what you try to do, when Haaland is at his very best — and his team-mates can find him — you are going to come unstuck; he added that third on the break after, as he said, West Ham pushed up looking for an equaliser.

Last weekend, after a varied hat-trick against Ipswich (a penalty, a ball in behind and a shot from outside the box), one of his City team-mates wrote on his match ball that he was getting sick of signing them for him. This time, one simply wrote, jokingly, ‘F*** off’.

Haaland has 11 hat-tricks for City now in barely two years since joining them and there will probably be more soon.

“He’s playing much better,” Guardiola said at the London Stadium, leaving no room for doubt. “In everything.”

Guardiola had been asked if Haaland’s goals looked a bit “crisper” than the ones he scored last season and on another day, he might have pointed out how many the Norwegian actually did score last season — 38 in 45 appearances in all competitions (he won the Premier League Golden Boot, with 27, as he did in his 2022-23 debut year when he got 36) — but on this occasion, the City manager was happy to meet the truth head-on.

During the summer, Guardiola left breadcrumbs about some observations, possibly even some frustrations, about Haaland’s contributions that he did not feel the need to share during last season. And in the past two weeks, he has decided to open up even more.

“After the (2022-23) treble, he struggled to handle it, and maybe not too many holidays,” Guardiola said last weekend. “I remember at the beginning he said, ‘Still I’m tired, still I am a little bit drained’.”

And after subtly suggesting during the club’s pre-season tour in the United States that he wanted more from Haaland, he took the opportunity to explain exactly what that was. Typically, it was after Haaland had scored that hat-trick against Ipswich.

“We talked a little bit in the States. I didn’t like some things and he changed his mind,” Guardiola teased and when later asked what he did not like, he again chose the open and honest route.

“I like when he runs a lot. I like when he presses like an animal. I like it. It helps to score a goal. When you are connected defensively, you are connected offensively. When you are disconnected defensively and you run and the ball surprises you, you are not precise.

“This mix; to know exactly what to do and help us. His body language… imagine a central defender has the ball and he makes a sprint with this body and legs moving. It’s scary. And it helps us, for the people in the middle and back to support him, and we are more effective in our high pressing.

Guardiola congratulates Haaland after full-time at the London Stadium (Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images)

“We need him. This is not negotiable. If you (Haaland) don’t score a goal, it’s fine, but you need to do it (the pressing). Especially when we link up with him, he has to control the ball better, but we are working with him on it. Hopefully he can do it.”

As much as the goals, all of that stuff was evident on Saturday evening. Haaland set up Rico Lewis for what should have been City’s third with a fine through ball and on one occasion raced back to prevent a West Ham counter-attack from a corner.

It was his best all-round performance in what feels like forever and if that feels harsh on somebody who, after all, still scored loads of goals last season, it always felt at the time like everything seemed that little bit harder in his second year of English football. With the benefit of hindsight, it certainly feels that way now.

“There are details,” Guardiola continued after the game. “He stays 20 minutes or half an hour after training sessions to work on finishing, close control, short passes. Last season, not even once was he there (doing that work) because he didn’t feel good; tired, niggles, most of the season.”

Haaland admitted after his goal in the opening league game against Chelsea two weeks ago that he could “stand and watch” while his team-mates bring the ball up the pitch, and that is OK because by just being there, he can take his markers into areas where they cannot get close to City’s other threats.

Issues can arise when City cannot find him for that one chance or, when they do, he misses it anyway, which is what happened quite a lot last season, certainly compared to his first one.

But the message from Guardiola is that City will keep finding him and Haaland looks ready to hold up his end of the bargain.

“What we need is the team to play better and better to give him more balls in the final third, and with Rico, Kevin (De Bruyne), (Ilkay) Gundogan, Bernardo (Silva), (James) McAtee, we’re going to create those situations because they’re really good in small spaces,” said the City manager.

Haaland has scored seven goals in his three games this season (Richard Pelham/Getty Images)

Interestingly, Guardiola has been trying to leverage another way of getting Haaland some relatively simple finishes: crosses to the back post. He started Savinho and Jeremy Doku on their strongest sides against Chelsea, with the aim of getting them to the byline to stand up the ball for Haaland to nod in, but the players took it upon themselves to switch sides after 15 minutes that day and they looked better for it.

In the opening exchanges at West Ham, City were clearly looking for those stood-up crosses, too, but when one found the intended target, Haaland headed it over the crossbar. But even the low crosses were often cut out.

“In small spaces, which happens quite often against us, we need players with good crosses, but we are still not so clever,” Guardiola continued. “For example, Jeremy arrived in the final third and we are not precise enough, like Jack (Grealish) sometimes, too, but in small spaces, when we improve in that department, he will have more chances and we know how clinical he is. Everybody knows it.”

Even so, the incredible statistics that seemed to accompany every Haaland performance in his debut season have suddenly come flooding back.

His eight Premier League hat-tricks have come in 69 games — it took Thierry Henry 258 matches to do the same.

Haaland has now scored more than once in 26 per cent of his league games for City — 10 doubles and those eight hat-tricks — which is the highest ratio of any player.

He began his Premier League career here in this stadium two years and three weeks ago with a pair against West Ham on his league debut, and with the hat-trick against Ipswich last weekend, he kept up his record of scoring against every team he has faced in the competition.

Going back where it all started and bagging another hat-trick: it looks like he is taking things up another level.

GO DEEPER

The Briefing: West Ham 1 Manchester City 3 – Another Haaland hat-trick but where is Walker?

(Top photo: Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)