Moez Echargui argued with the chair umpire after a disputed call during his first-round match at the Lincoln Challenger. The fourth seed lost to qualifier Dhakshineswar Suresh after the incident in the deciding tiebreak.
The flashpoint came at 4-4 in the third-set tiebreak with Echargui serving. He reached for a defensive lob from Suresh and smashed what appeared to be a winner, but the umpire ruled his racket contacted the ball on the other side of the net and awarded the point to Suresh.
Echargui protested at length. “I cannot believe it. Tell me what you are doing. Like I hit the ball here, what are you doing? It’s 4-all, and we are playing for three hours,” he said. He received a warning for delaying play and called for the physio before Suresh closed out the match on the next two points.
The loss left Echargui with a 2026 record of eight wins and 22 defeats. He had reached six ITF finals and three Challenger finals in 2025, winning all of them.