Listening in to Zverev's speech, Overend said: "Zverev has got that completely wrong and this man, Mohamed Lahyani, very experience chair umpire, I don’t think he’s put a foot wrong the umpire."

Fleming jibed: "He’d do well to just stop talking here Zverev, before he talks himself into any more trouble."

The second seed attempted to backtrack a few minutes later, adding: "I’m not saying I would have won Roland Garros, I’m not saying that. But that, then in Hamburg, I don’t say I would have won the tournament but it didn’t help. Ask us players, the moment we come to Asia, we’re already played all four Grand Slams, we’ve played 80 matches."

Zverev went on to take the opening set in a tiebreak, after which Fleming noted that he would need to apologise post-match after watching the incident back.