Iga Swiatek started her 2023 Australian Open campaign with a solid win over Jule Niemeier, but she experienced a disrespectful situation after the match.
Swiatek's popularity has soared massively after her tremendous 2022 season. Before that, her fandom mostly consisted of Polish fans, but since then, she has seen more and more fans embrace her as the great player that she has become.
It’s only natural after she produced one of the more iconic seasons in recent tennis history winning 37 matches in a row on top of winning multiple events in that year. Her popularity was particularly evident after her first match at the Australian Open against Jule Niemeier.
As it’s generally the tradition, the winning players remained behind a little bit to sign some autographs for fans. What happened to Swiatek, though, showed a troubling trend of fans treating players without a lot of respect.
There has been a massive rise in disrespectful behavior from fans towards athletes. As she was catching tennis balls to sign, one fan proved to be a bit too eager and didn’t wait for Swiatek to properly prepare herself to catch the ball but rather just threw it into her, which she didn’t appreciate at all.
The World No. 1 immediately reacted, telling the fan not to do that because it was highly disrespectful and dangerous as well. It could have ended badly, but on top of that, it just shows a blatant disregard for the player.
Even so, Swiatek still went ahead and signed the ball before throwing it back, which was a nice gesture. She could have easily declined to do that, but it showed that she still appreciates her fans, even if they’re out of line sometimes. After that, the Pole likely tried to start focusing on her recovery and her next match at the event.