Following his 5-11, 4-11, 4-11 loss to Federico Staksrud in the Round of 16 at the LT Open Saturday morning, Zane Ford took to social media to express his displeasure with the top seed for forgetting to test his paddles ahead of the match.

“This guy—the antics are crazy,’ a frustrated Ford said in an Instagram post. “This guy, who’s number 1 in the world, forgets to test his paddle before the Round of 16, ironically, to mess with the players. I just wanna know; if I did this and I didn’t test my paddles before the match, am I gonna be disqualified? Am I gonna lose a set? What’s gonna happen? I feel like there needs to be a lot more rules about the situation.”

According to the live scoring from the contest, the match officially began at 10:09am ET, nine minutes after the posted start time of 10am.

For comparison, Friday’s opening match between Connor Garnett and Lova Metor—which didn’t have any known delays—began at 8:05am ET, five minutes after the posted start time of 8am.

Staksrud responded with a comment on Ford’s post:

“I apologize. I didn’t mean to do it. I also agree with you. We need to put more rules on that. I waited 30 minutes on a singles match for my opponent to have his paddles in Virginia Beach.”

The match Staksrud refers to here was his Round of 32 clash against Jhonnatan Medina Alvarez, which was delayed by over 15 minutes while Medina Alvarez’s paddles were being tested.

There is no mention of any penalty caused by player negligence or paddle testing delay in the 2025 PPA Tournament Handbook, though this may change given that this has been a point of contention at back-to-back events.

Staksrud will face Mota Alhouni later Saturday afternoon in the quarterfinals at Life Time Peachtree Corners.