Sara Sorribes Tormo pushes back on criticism surrounding Miyu Kato disqualification at Roland Garros

WATCH: Kato left the court in tears following the decision to default her and Aldila Sutjiadi on Sunday.

PARIS—Sara Sorribes Tormo made her first public statement since her Roland Garros doubles match with Marie Bouzkova against Miyu Kato and Aldila Sutjiadi ended in a default to Kato, who errantly struck a ball which hit a ball girl on Sunday.

Sentiment on social media and among fellow players has quickly turned against Sorribes Tormo and Bouzkova, who were seen as instigating a default in their favor after Kato was only issued a warning, pointing out that the ball girl hit by the ball was crying. A screenshot of Sorribes Tormo and Bouzkova also circulated social media, which appeared to show the two laughing in the wake of Kato’s disqualification and subsequent penalty of ranking points and prize money earned in women’s doubles.

Alizé Cornet tweeted the following to Kato after the match: “Insane decision. I really feel sorry for you…but a lot of players (except Marie and Sara obviously) are supporting you.”

Sorribes Tormo was nonetheless steadfast in her position that the decision ultimately came from the referee rather than she and Bouzkova.

“First of all, it's a very bad situation that happened yesterday,” she explained after enduring a three hour, 41-minute defeat to Beatriz Haddad Maia in singles on Monday. “Also, for Marie and for me it's tough to have all this kind of things that people are saying. It's not easy because the only thing we've done yesterday was going to the referee and explain him what happened.

“So, first of all, we were saying that the ball kid was crying because we were scared, because we were, oh, something happened. Then we were saying that the ball was direct because he didn't saw the ball.

“All the rest the decision was taken by the supervisor, and I think it's not our thing or we haven't done anything bad. Yeah, that's the only thing I'm going to say about this, what happened yesterday.”

Bouzkova spoke similarly about the incident following the match, referring to what happened as “unfortunate” and noted her concern about how hard the ball had hit the ball girl, though she did not see the ball hit her.

“If [Kato] would've done this gesture and it would've gone this much away from the girl, nothing would've happened and we wouldn't be having this conversation,” Bouzkova said.

Sorribes Tormo and Bouzkova will play No. 6 seeds Ellen Perez and Nicole Melichar on Tuesday while Kato returned to action with a mixed doubles win, earning warm support from the crowd as she and Tim Pütz scored an emotional win over Luisa Stefani and Rafael Matos, 7-6 (5), 6-2.