Holger Rune’s mother Aneke threw shade at Jannik Sinner following the fourth-round battle between the young stars by sharing a post questioning the legitimacy of medical time-outs at the 2025 Australian Open. The thrilling matchup was marred with controversies such as both players taking timeouts and a broken net causing a 21-minute delay.

Defending champion Sinner and 13th seed Rune faced each other in a blockbuster fourth-round clash. The two men put on a high-quality show and it was the World No. 1 who came through 6-3, 3-6, 6-3, 6-2. However, there were many discussions about the impact of the aforementioned delays on the match’s outcome.

Sinner took an 11-minute medical time-out during the third set while leading 3-2 as he was visibly in some physical discomfort. However, he recovered well and took following the break to go 5-3 ahead. At this stage of the match, Rune also took a 3-minute medical timeout to treat his right knee.

Interestingly, the 21-year-old’s mother Aneke Rune shared a post on her Instagram story which pondered over whether the medical time-outs taken by Jannik Sinner and Novak Djokovic, during his quarterfinal clash against Carlos Alcaraz, were due to an injury or a strategy to shift momentum.

“Are tennis medical timeouts turning into their own form of tactical dark arts? We’ve seen a few this AO seemingly shift the momentum of big matches,” the pst read.

Interstingly, Holger Rune also had his say on the situation during the post-match press conference. Many tennis fans also had their say on the entire incident.

Holger Rune felt that it was within Jannik Sinner’s right to take a medical time-out since it was very warm during their match, even though the time-out lasted longer than he expected.

“It’s perfectly fine that you check, it was a very warm day today even though it was not sun all the time, it was very humid and so I was also feeling it. So, definitely, it’s fair that he got checked, I think it took longer than I expected. It was around 10 minutes maybe even more so that was a bit brutal in the middle of the set,” Rune said.

The Dane said he’ll look to put this match behind him and didn’t give any excuses for his defeat.

“But yeah again you know it is what it is and I could move on but yeah I had good momentum at this moment. But yeah it was not the worst timing from his side,” he remarked.

After defeating Rune, Jannik Sinner decimated Alex de Minaur in the quarterfinals to continue his title defense and now awaits Ben Shelton.