At one stage, Karolina Pliskova was the number one ranked female tennis player in the world, and you must feel pretty good when you’re at the top of your game.

She is now ranked fifth in the world, which is still mighty respectable, but she has come under fire for what transpired yesterday.

In the aftermath of her defeat to Greece’s Maria Sakkari at the Italian Open, Pliskova lost her rag and bashed the hell out of umpire Marta Mrozinska’s chair.

She was miffed at Mrozinska after a call didn’t go her way, as ABC outlines:

The Czech was locked at a set all, 5-5, and 40-40 in her already-tense second-round match against the world number 42 Sakkari in Rome.

Pliskova put away a simple smash which seemed to land on the line to give her a point to lead 6-5.

But to her astonishment, umpire Marta Mrozinska and the line judge called the ball out.

Pliskova duly lost the game to go 6-5 down and Sakkari served out to win 7-5 in the third set.

Yeah, she didn’t handle that loss very well. Skip to around the 45-second mark for the racket-clanging action:

I quite like this angle of the outburst:

#Pliskova v #Sakkari match point. Karolina destroying umpire chair #ibi18 #WTA pic.twitter.com/KH0OUcmsFO

— Julian Siemion (@julsiemion) May 16, 2018

Classy.

If you want to see what led up to the incident, here’s some of Pliskova’s anger building towards Mrozinska.

Plizkova found support in her sister, Krystina, who is also a pro tennis player and ranked 70th in the world:

Pretty sure the chair umpire would be fine with that, too.

[source:abc]