At the ATP World Tour 250 tournament in Shenzhen, Dudi Sela gave precedence to his religious beliefs over his sporting ambitions.
To date, Dudi Sela has earned more than 3.5 million US dollars in his career in the singles and doubles, as well as convincing the audience with fine gestures, for example when he embraced the Serbs in a chair after a match against Ivo Karlovic.However, on Friday evening in the quarter-finals of the ATP World Tour 250 tournament in Shenzhen, he showed that Sela is also a man of strict religious principles:”After only one game played, Sela gave up in the third set – not for injury reasons, but because Jom Kippur, the highest Jewish holiday, had begun.
Opponent Alexandr Dolgopolov made it to the semi-finals without finishing a match, where he had few problems against damir Dzumhur and is now playing David Goffin for the title on Sunday.
Jom Kippur is to be fasted for 25 hours, and actually not to be worked on.Sela had asked the organizers in Shenzhen for an earlier start date – in vain.