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US Open: Coco Gauff, Caroline Garcia and other tennis players say cyberbullying is still a problem
NEW YORK (AP) — Caroline Garcia, US Open semi-finalist two years agodrew attention on Wednesday to the ever-present problem cyberbullying in tennisespecially amongst bettors after her first-round defeat on the Grand Slam tournament.
Other players shared Garcia’s regret, including defending champion Coco Gauff, who said: “You can have a good day and then someone literally tells you, ‘Oh, go kill yourself.’ And you’re like, ‘OK, thanks.'”
Garcia, a 30-year-old from France who was ranked a high 4th, was seeded twenty eighth on Flushing Meadows but was eliminated by Renata Zarazúa 6-1, 6-4 on Tuesday. Zarazúa is ranked 92nd and is making her US Open debut.
“You may think it doesn’t hurt us. But it does. We are human” Garcia wrote on social media“And sometimes when we get (the) news, we’re already emotionally devastated by a terrible loss. And it can be damaging. Many before me have addressed this issue. And yet, no progress has been made.”
Garcia provided examples of “just a few” of the a whole lot of messages she says she has received after recent match losses, including one which said she should consider suicide and one other that said, “I hope your mom dies soon.”
“At the end of the day, I’m just a normal girl who works hard and does her best, and I have the tools and the work to protect myself from this hate. But it’s still not OK,” Garcia wrote. “I’m really concerned when I think about the younger players coming up who have to go through this. People who haven’t fully developed as people yet and who could be affected by this hate.”
As other players have mentioned before, she spoke in regards to the problem of verbal attacks from players upset about losing money.
“Tournaments and sports still have bookmakers who continue to attract new people to unhealthy bets,” Garcia said. “The days of cigarette brands sponsoring sports are long gone. And yet we promote bookmakers who are actively destroying people’s lives.”
This sort of harassment via social media Of course, this is nothing recent and it is not recent in tennis.
“You hear a lot of nasty things, and people talk about how you look, how your family looks, all of those things,” Gauff said. “When you’re already struggling with your own mental health issues, and you have people digging deeper, it’s tough.”
As Frances Tiafoe, a semifinalist in New York in 2022, said, “People are saying some crazy things. It’s just crazy.”
“I try not to read the comments,” said 2019 US Open champion Bianca Andreescu, saying she’ll ask her PR person to scroll down and let her know when positive comments are available in. “Because there’s always going to be some negative comment, and I’ve learned that the hard way.”
Players have pointed this out prior to now, and Grand Slam tournament organizers have tried to forestall such messages from reaching athletes.
In 2022, the French Open partnered with a company that uses artificial intelligence to filter players’ social media accounts, and the groups that run the US Open, Wimbledon, the ladies’s tournament and the lower-tier ITF Tour announced in December that they were launching a service to observe “offensive and threatening content” on X, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and TikTok.
“Many before me have raised this issue,” Garcia said. “But there has still been no progress. Social media platforms are not preventing this, even though AI is at a very advanced stage.”
She ended her message by addressing whoever read it, suggesting that “the next time you see a post from an athlete, singer, or anyone else who has failed or lost, remember that she or he is also a human being trying to do their best in life. Be kind. Show love. Enjoy life.”