Marketa Vondrousova Shares Disgusting Messages She Received After Abu Dhabi Loss
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Former Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova played in just her second tournament in the last seven months at the 2025 Abu Dhabi Open. Unfortunately, that did not stop some on social media from giving her disgraceful abuse.
Vondrousova missed the rest of the 2024 season after Wimbledon due to a severe shoulder injury. She underwent surgery for that issue, allowing her to return to the 2025 Adelaide International.
After winning her first match back against Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, she was forced to retire in the next round. That problem led to her missing the 2025 Australian Open. She had hoped to use the event in Adelaide as preparation for the season's opening Grand Slam.
Vondrousova played her first match since Adelaide and second since July in Abu Dhabi. She made an impressive start at the WTA 500 tournament by beating Emma Raducanu, who lost her third consecutive match.
That was followed by an even better victory against Yulia Putintseva, who has significantly improved outside clay in the last 12 months. Vondrosuova easily defeated her to progress to the Abu Dhabi Open quarterfinals.
However, Belinda Bencic, who missed almost the entire 2024 season due to being on maternity leave, proved too strong. In a repeat of the gold medal match at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 that Bencic won, the Swiss was victorious once again.
Sadly, tennis players, especially on the WTA Tour, are subjected to much despicable vitriol when they lose matches. Vondrousova demonstrated the degree to which that exists by showing some of the awful messages she received after losing to Bencic.
There were many abusive messages in what Vondrousova shared. This included her being told not to play tennis anymore, one questioning how someone like her won a Grand Slam, and another saying she needed to learn tennis.
However, the most shocking messages were about her dying. One account said they would pray for it daily, and another told Vondrousova that they hoped the 2023 Wimbledon winner would meet her demise.
This is not the first time players have raised alarms about extreme reactions to their performances. Last year, Caroline Garcia shared messages she received last year and how it can impact players' mental health.
Naomi Osaka has also spoken about managing social media abuse. Despite experiencing it for several years throughout her career since coming into the spotlight, the Japanese star is still unsure how to handle it.
Many of those who give abuse are accounts that bet on matches and are enraged when they get their choice wrong. Rather than doing any internal reflection, they lash out at the player they hoped would win.
It is hard to know what governing bodies can do about these losers. There is technology that has been created and used at Grand Slams that automatically screens for hateful content, and perhaps that needs to become more prevalent.
Outside of that, there is only so much the ATP or WTA can do about faceless accounts giving abuse. Blocking them often just leads to many of these imbeciles creating new accounts and continuing from where they left off.
