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Melissa Cook, a teenage Novak Djokovic fan, attended the Australian Open on Sunday night to see her favorite player win and perhaps snag a souvenir t-shirt. However, her freebie was seized by another fan named Yael Rothschild in a video that has gone viral since the incident.
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Minutes after Djokovic won the Australian Open, he threw one of his t-shirts into the audience for a teenage fan, 14-year-old Cook who was sitting in the front row.
However, another fan, mother-of-three Rothschild turned the tennis match into a football game when she intercepted the freebie shirt, and snatched it for herself while it was in mid-air.
And she's not giving it back.
"When the shirt was thrown, there would have been 20 excited people, all with their hands out," Rothschild told the Herald Sun. "After (it had been) thrown, there would have been 19 disappointed people. Such is life. I am not sure how you can snatch out of the hands (of) someone sitting three seats away from you with a barrier between the seating."
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According to Rothschild, Cook had enough Djokovic memorabilia.
"She was seen holding his sweat band, his towel and his shoe - not a bad night's winnings," she said.
Cook denied these claims, saying the items she was holding were from the 2011 Open.
"And the towel she saw me with wasn't even Djokovic's - it was given to me by an official," Cook said.
Cook, however, believes the shirt was intended for her and deserves it back so she can hang it on her "Novak Wall."
"I had been yelling out to him the whole match and he had looked up and acknowledged me and then at the end he came straight over to my direction and threw the shirt up," Cook told the Herald Sun. "I started crying because I couldn't believe that something I truly believe he meant for me was taken by someone else."
Maybe the tennis match, turned football game will turn into a wrestling match for the shirt.
View the video below of Novak Djokovic fan Melissa Cook's t-shirt being seized by Yael Rothschild at Australian Open.
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