Chinese tennis star Wu Yibing on his journey to ATP TourOns Jabeur believes that unsuccessful gamblers with “nothing to do in their life” are behind the hate messages Iga Swiatek received after dropping a set at the Cincinnati Open. And the Tunisian tennis star extended her support to the world No 1 by admitting that she was glad that she was talking about the abuse that she has received.
Top seed Swiatek is into the quarterfinals of the Ohio event after seeing off China’s Qinwen Zheng 3-6, 6-1, 6-1 on Thursday. But after dropping a set against her opponent, the reigning French Open champion revealed in her post-match press conference that she had been the victim of online abuse immediately after the contest had concluded.
Speaking at the media gathering, 22-year-old Swiatek said: “For sure today’s match wasn’t perfect. We all saw that. But the amount of hate and criticism that me and my team get after even losing a set is just ridiculous.”
“I want to encourage people to be more thoughtful when they comment on the Internet.
“We all sacrifice a lot. We’re all working really hard to be in that place. We’re always giving 100% of what we can do every day. It’s sad for me to see that people I work with and myself, we’re really judged.”
Iga Swiatek called out online hate she received online after dropping a set at the Cincinnati Open. (Image: Getty)
Jabeur has joined Swiatek in the quarterfinals after she came through her Round of 16 match against Donna Vekic with the Croatian forced to retire as a consequence of a viral illness.
When she was asked for her view on Swiatek’s claims about online hate and whether she had received similar comments, Jabeur said: “Yeah, we do. I mean, I’m glad that Iga is talking about it. Honestly, I mean, you win, you lose, you get hate messages no matter what you do.
“We need more nicer people in this earth, but I don’t think you can change the mentality of some betters. They have nothing to do in their life, and they are just spending money on you, and probably, what, they lost a couple of bucks on Iga losing a set.”
Swiatek revealed that she had faced a similar issue after losing the Dubai final back in February.
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Ons Jabeur has blamed gamblers for online hate aimed at Iga Swiatek and other tour players. (Image: Getty)
“I was pretty proud of my results but people really just saw the last match and that I lost in the final and they shouldn’t,” Swiatek said.
“I’m putting a lot of energy for it not to hit too deeply, but I realised that sometimes people – I don’t know if they’re my fans or not but they want me to play better – cause me to waste a lot of energy to ignore them.”
Swiatek will now face Marketa Vondrousova in Friday’s centre court quarterfinal match-up and she believes that work on both her physical and mental wellbeing has helped her get to this point despite her detractors on social media.
Referring to her comeback win against Zheng, she added: “I was able actually to do that [win] because I’m doing a lot of work physically and mentally also. Off court, I’m trying to be the best kind of player and person as possible. So, yeah, I wanted to just kind of encourage people on the Internet to be more positive and also see the positive side of what we are doing.”
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