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Tennys Sandgren was given a mauling on and off the court during his Australian Open quarter-final on Wednesday. The American, who was forced to deny he is a far-right sympathiser earlier in the week, was soundly beaten by Hyeon Chung in straight sets shortly after Serena Williams fired a shot at the 26-year-old on Twitter.
Sandgren had earlier deleted the vast majority of his tweets after he was questioned why he followed a collection of far-right figures on Twitter. Inevitably, many of those deleted tweets had already been taken as screenshots. One, from 2015, appeared to show photos of Williams with the caption “disgusting” underneath it.
Whether or not she had seen the rumours circulating on Twitter, Williams appears to have little time for Sandgren. One minute after ESPN’s broadcast of Sandgren’s match started Williams tweeted out two words: “Turns channel”. Williams is not defending her title at this year’s Australian Open after giving birth to her daughter last September. She will make her return to competitive tennis next month at the Fed Cup.
On Tuesday, Sandgren said he had deleted his tweets to “make a cleaner start”. He added: “People can screenshot, save and distribute everything they would like to. I know that, and that’s fine. It is what it is. It’s just something that I thought wouldn’t be a bad way to kind of move forward.”
He also denied once again he held far-right views. “[It’s] not really specific ‘alt-right’ content that I deem of value, I think that’s very incorrect, and I don’t find information like that to be of value or to hold on to any of those things,” he said. “So it’s not who I am as a person in any way.”
Sandgren offered little resistance to Chung on the court. The unseeded Korean will now face Roger Federer or Tomas Berdych in the semi-final.
Williams is a 23-time grand slam singles champion, has won the Australian Open seven times, has four Olympic gold medals and has amassed $84m in prize money. Sandgren is the world No97.
(GUARDIAN)
