Death threats, nasty emails and other social media quips from disgruntled gamblers seem like part of the landscape for professional athletes. At least in the tennis world. Frances Tiafoe, Jessica Pegula and Donna Vekic all acknowledge such threats.
“Everybody gets them after a loss,” Tiafoe, a 25-year-old from Maryland who was a semifinalist at last year’s U.S. Open and reached the French Open’s third round this year, told the Associated Press. “It’s just how society is today. I know how that affects people’s mental health. That’s very real.”
Sloane Stephens, the 2017 champion at Flushing Meadows and 2018 runner-up at Roland Garros, told the AP that she receives racist messages online.
“It’s obviously been a problem my entire career. It has never stopped,” said Stephens. “If anything, it’s only gotten worse.”
In response to such comments, the French Tennis Federation has hired a company to use AI software to block negative remarks during the 15-day Grand Slam tournament that ends June 11, according to the AP.
More than 700 competitors covering every category from doubles to wheelchairs have free access to Bodyguard.ai for use on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
“This is really important for us: for the players to be very comfortable and be able to focus on the competition. Tennis is mental. It’s really what you have in your mind that counts; you’re making 1,000 decisions during a match,” said FFT CEO Caroline Flaissier, who put the cost to the federation at somewhere between $30,000 and $50,000.
“We know that there is a lot of cyberbullying,” she told the AP. “We have to address that major issue, so we thought let’s do a test.”
The test includes monitoring social media used by the federation and the French Open.
“It’s a big issue in tennis. We get these stupid and abusive comments all the time. And to be honest, we are tired of it,” said Daria Kasatkina, a 26-year- old from Russia who was a 2022 semifinalist in Paris. “People just do that, and they don’t get punished. Nothing. Only we suffer from reading all of this (expletive).”
After a defeat, accounts get blasted with comments, often from disappointed gamblers.
“Last week, I had three match points in the quarterfinals (at the Morocco Open) and I ended up losing in a tiebreaker. And that was probably the worst it’s been. Ever,” said Peyton Stearns, a 21-year-old American who won the 2022 NCAA championship for the University of Texas. “You keep seeing these notifications: Boom, boom, boom, boom. You have to go through it. You report. You block. It’s a hassle and it drains you mentally.”
2021 French Open champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic told the AP that no software company is going to put an end to the shenanigans.
“There’s always going to be something negative and it’s always going to be about the results,” she said. “When you’re winning, you get positive comments. When you’re losing, you get negative comments. That’s just the way it is. It’s in every sport and it’s not only for women or for men. That’s how the world is.”
A number of players elected not to sign on choosing to accept the vitriol.
“I was, for sure, upset the first couple of times,” said Borna Coric, who is from Croatia. “But then you realize that those are not good people. And they would never come to your face and say it.”
The organizers of the year’s remaining two Grand Slam tournaments, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, are keeping tabs on how things go in Paris.
“We have relationships with the main social media platforms, and we do take steps to flag comments that cause players concern,” All England Club spokeswoman Eloise Tyson wrote in an email to the AP. “We will be very keen to hear the feedback from the FFT and players regarding the technology they are using at Roland Garros.”
U.S. Tennis Association spokesman Brendan McIntyre said the USTA is “evaluating the product and determining whether this is something we would like to make available to players for 2023 and beyond.”
