Legendary coach and former ATP star Brad Gilbert has described Rafael Jodar’s behaviour towards a ball kid at the Shanghai Masters as “inexcusable.”

Jodar achieved the latest impressive result of a stellar 2026 season in Shanghai as he reached his first-ever Masters 1000 final.

The 20-year-old climbed to a career-high ranking of world No 11 after losing 6-1, 6-7(5), 4-6 to Spanish countryman Alejandro Davidovich Fokina in the title match in China.

However, Jodar sparked controversy for an incident during his fourth round victory over Botic van de Zandschulp in Shanghai.

After losing a point, Jodar was heard expressing his frustration to a ball kid, who was handing him a towel, by saying: “Give me the f***ing towel, damn it!” He received a code violation warning from the chair umpire.

Speaking on Tennis Channel’s The Big T podcast, Gilbert addressed the question of whether Jodar is the “villain of the ATP Tour.”

“There’s a lot of things that happen on a court, but one thing that is inexcusable… if you’ve ever been a ball kid, and know that some of these kids are nervous doing it — you can never lose it on a ball kid,” said the American.

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“I feel like losing it on a ball kid should be less [acceptable] than losing it on an umpire. The one where he literally snapped about not getting his towel and swearing at a ball kid, to me, is inexcusable.

“I understand players lose it, we’ve seen [Daniil] Medvedev lose it a lot, players snapping… that should be off limits.

“So, he should literally watch that video, learn from it. If he gets mad, it should never have anything to do with a ball person again, because I feel like that’s controllable.

“Losing and snapping at an umpire sometimes, or a decision on court, or yourself, your opponent, anything… not a ball person, who’s very vulnerable.”

The former world No 4, who coached Andre Agassi, Coco Gauff and Andy Roddick, went on to assert that Jodar should never make the same mistake again.

“He did apologise, and I think that hopefully somebody showed him that, and that’s one thing he should be adamant about: this will never happen again,” Gilbert continued.

“And he’s a very cool customer, but it’s interesting, on some players, when they do snap, their snap is a little more and you’re a little bit surprised. So he definitely has it a little bit in his game.

“But you don’t want to think about something like that, you want to think about more what he’s accomplished this year, and where he’s headed, because you feel like he’s headed towards the top five.

“But this thing, he needs to put to bed. Something like this, in my opinion, should never happen again.”