A fan was ejected from a U.S. Open tennis match early Tuesday morning after German player Alexander Zverev complained the man used language from Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime.
Zverev, the No. 12 seed, was serving at 2-2 in the fourth set of his match against No. 6 Jannik Sinner when he suddenly went to chair umpire James Keothavong and pointed toward the fan, who was sitting in a section behind the umpire.
“He just said the most famous Hitler phrase there is in this world,” Zverev told Keothavong. “It’s not acceptable.”
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“He started singing the anthem of Hitler that was back in the day. It was ‘Deutschland über alles’ and it was a bit too much,” Zverev said.
I’ve heard it before. I’m not sure I’d know which was the current anthem if you played the nazi one and the current one before today, though.
Yeah, but would you (I assume american) even know enough words to so clearly repeat the opening words? Idk. It’s just not something you’d come across often even in Germany outside of history class, german class, or neonazi circles. I assume even less so for non Germany. So that this would be so top of mind for someone to just slip out is just such a strange and unlikely thought to me.
Idk. The phrase is bad, but it wouldn’t come up in my top 10 of nazi phrases, so for it to just slip out, I have to to assume that person frequently uses nazi phrases.
Likely we’ll never know