Morgan Riddle, the girlfriend of ATP star Taylor Fritz, has responded to criticism over her deleted Instagram posts that appeared to target Alexander Zverev.
Fritz toppled Zverev in a thrilling five-set battle to reach the Wimbledon quarterfinal. The American fought back from two-sets-to-love down to win 4-6, 6-7, 6-4, 7-6, 6-3 in three and a half hours.
Shortly after the match, Riddle, who works as a part-time vlogger for her YouTube channel and is a fashion influencer with over 300,000 Instagram followers, shared two posts on the Meta platform and went viral almost instantly.
In the first post, Riddle snapped Fritz while watching from the coaching box with the message, "Cheer loud ladies," and in a second post where, she recorded herself dancing in delight after her boyfriend won the match with the message, "When ur man wins 4 the girls."
These two posts were untangled by tennis fans and several media outlets and interpreted as a direct attack on Zverev over his domestic abuse allegations.
Zverev was infamously accused by her ex-girlfriend Brenda Patea of physical assault, with the prosecutor telling the court during a trial in May that the World No. 4 strangled the mother of his child with both hands, causing her difficulties in breathing and swallowing.
The German objected to a fine last year but reached an out-of-court settlement with Patea last month. Zverev, however, was ordered to pay €150,000 to the state and €50,000 to charitable organizations, and the case was eventually dropped.
But Riddle has now clarified the contentious posts on her Instagram stories, which she says have been "misunderstood." She was equally surprised that her message was taken out of context, indirectly implicating her as mocking Zverev for his off-court case.
"Regarding my stories yesterday, I took them down as soon as I realized the misunderstanding and how blown out of proportion they had become by the media. They were not about anything that's happened off the tennis court [and] there's no bad blood between anyone."
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