"Next time you come to the net, I'll kill you!": Corentin Moutet threatened with death by a Russian player at the Aix-en-Provence tournament

Nothing ever goes "normal" with Corentin Moutet . Competing in the Aix-en-Provence Challenger tournament, the French player was reportedly the target of death threats from his opponent Pavel Kotov on Wednesday during the first round, before the match was interrupted by nightfall. The 26-year-old Frenchman denounced the Russian player's behavior on X (ex-Twitter) before deleting his message, according to information from the Tennis Temple website. "The next time you come to the net, I'll kill you! One day, someone will kill you," the Muscovite allegedly violently inveighed.

"There wasn't even a warning. Apparently, those words are allowed on court," Corentin Moutet lamented on social media. Annoyed and disillusioned, the Neuilly-sur-Seine native subsequently directly mentioned the ATP in another post. "How can you expect me not to react if you're not doing your job?" Subsequently, in response to a post reporting on the controversy, the current world number 82 retorted: "I'm going to have trouble sleeping..."

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Ultimately, the Frenchman had the last word against the Russian (7-5, 3-6, 7-5) in a tense atmosphere - the two men (unsurprisingly) did not shake hands after the last point - but was eliminated from the tournament this Thursday, in the 8th finals (7-6, 7-6), by the American giant Reilly Opelka (2.11 m). In difficulty in recent weeks and accustomed to repeated controversies, Moutet, who retired last week at the Masters 1000 in Madrid by smashing yet another racket , was on three consecutive defeats before his success against Kotov. The left-hander also parted ways for the second time with his coach Petar Popovic, after only two months of collaboration.