Eric Bolte-Imagn Images
There are plenty of sports where you spend the bulk of a showdown in close proximity to your opponent, but tennis is not one of them. As a result, you wouldn’t expect a player to take issue with their opponent’s personal hygiene, but Britain’s Harriet Dart did exactly that after lobbying an umpire to make France’s Lois Boisson put on deodorant during a match.
Tennis is one of the many sports where players need to supplement their athletic ability with the mental fortitude that’s required to endure the grueling nature of what is essentially a physically taxing chess match that usually takes hours to play out.
However, as John McEnroe proved on many occasions, keeping your cool on the court is much easier said than done. There are plenty of tennis players who usually don’t have much trouble keeping their composure, but there are many others who’ve been thrown off their game by hostile crowds, rowdy spectators, and questionable calls that failed to go their way.
I’ve come across my fair share of tennis temper tantrums over the years, but I’m not sure if I’ve encountered one sparked by a more bizarre issue than the complaint that spawned a very unexpected moment during Tuesday’s match between Harriet Dart and Lois Boisson at the Rouen Open in France on Tuesday.
Dart, a 28-year-old hailing from Great Britain, was ranked 110th in the world in singles play heading into her Round of 32 showdown with Boisson, the 21-year-old who was sitting at 303rd place prior to their match in her native country.
According to the BBC, things got off to a fairly surprising start when Boisson earned a 6-0 victory in the first set (which only took 28 minutes to complete) as Dart struggled to find her game.
The two women were changing sides during the second set when Dart jumped out of her seat and made her way past the umpire’s chair while asking the official, “Can you tell her to wear deodorant?” while adding “she smells really bad.”
Harriet Dart asked the umpire to tell her opponent to wear deodorant 😳
She lost the match 6-0 6-3
(h/t @popalorena)
pic.twitter.com/kk5Wm69jTd— The Tennis Letter (@TheTennisLetter) April 15, 2025
It does not appear the umpire passed the message along, and Boisson went on to win the match after putting things away with a 6-3 showing in the second set.