A tip of the cap to the Wimbledon player who caught his hat when it fell off but still won a point

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LONDON (AP) — Perhaps Jordan Thompson deserved a tip of the cap for winning a set-ending point at Wimbledon while clutching his hat after it fell off his head during a serve. His opponent Friday, Luciano Darderi, thought that point shouldn't have been awarded to Thompson, but the chair umpire disagreed.

“I mean, my hat’s fallen off before, and I know what the rules are. It didn't hinder him; it hindered me,” said Thompson, an Australian ranked 44th who will face U.S. Open runner-up Taylor Fritz next. “So I don't know what he was complaining about.”

At 5-4, 40-15 against Darderi, Thompson used a hat trick to put a lid on the opening set en route to a 6-4, 6-4, 3-6, 6-3 victory that sent him to the fourth round at the All England Club for the first time.

On a second serve, the backward baseball cap Thompson was wearing slid off as he landed on his follow-through. Thompson immediately grabbed it with his left hand and continued to wield his racket with his right hand for a point that wound up lasting seven strokes.

It was capped by Thompson's backhand volley winner as he ran to the net with hat in hand.

Has he ever carried that bit of his outfit around during a point before?

“That’s the first time I can remember,” Thompson said.

In the moment, Darderi thought chair umpire Mohamed Lahyani would stop the point and order them to replay it because of what happened with Thompson's chapeau. The 59th-ranked Darderi, who was born in Argentina and represents Italy, walked to the sideline pointing in Thompson's direction and pleading his case with Lahyani.

At one point, Darderi yanked off his own white hat and yelled, “It's the rule!”

But Lahyani wouldn't budge, and Darderi chucked his racket toward the sideline seat, drawing some boos from spectators at Court 18.

As the conversation between Darderi and Lahyani continued during the changeover between sets, Thompson pointed out that the rules address when a player's hat hits the court — “Happened to me a few times,” he said — rather than if it's caught out of the air.

“It didn’t seem normal to me to play a point with a hat in your hand. It was strange,” Darderi said at his news conference later. “But it was just one point. It didn’t change the match.”

On that, both players certainly agreed.

“It’s not like it was 5-all in the fifth, deuce,” Thompson said. “Every point’s big, but it is what it is.”

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Howard Fendrich has been the AP’s tennis writer since 2002. Find his stories here: https://apnews.com/author/howard-fendrich. More AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis