Iga Swiatek believes it is the WTA’s responsibility to ensure player safety at tournaments and was pleased to see the tour’s swift reaction to the incident that involved a fan causing great distress for Emma Raducanu in Dubai on Tuesday.
The WTA announced early on Wednesday that it has banned a man who “exhibited fixated behaviour” towards Emma Raducanu during the Briton's straight-sets defeat to Karolina Muchova at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships late on Tuesday.
Former US Open champion Raducanu appeared to be crying as she approached the umpire's chair at 2-0 in the first set of her rain-delayed second-round match with Muchova.
The match was briefly halted after a tearful Raducanu spoke with the umpire, who quickly contacted tournament organisers. The 22-year-old stood behind the official's chair as the spectator was escorted away, with Muchova rushing to comfort her before play resumed.
In a statement released on Wednesday, the tour revealed that the same man who was removed from the stands had approached Raducanu in a public area earlier in the week.
The WTA said the man has been “banned from all WTA events pending a threat assessment”.
Swiatek, the current world number two, believes the tour did the right thing, and acknowledges such situations can be hard to avoid, even with strict safety measures in place.
“I know the WTA banned this person from going on-site anywhere on any tournament. So I guess the reaction was pretty solid,” the Polish second seed said on Wednesday, after punching her ticket to the Dubai quarter-finals.
“I like that because it's WTA's responsibility to keep us safe, for that environment to be safe for us. I guess with their help it's fine. But, yeah, it's hard probably to avoid these situations before.”
On Wednesday, Raducanu posted on Instagram: "Thank you for the messages of support. Difficult experience yesterday but I'll be okay and proud of how I came back and competed despite what happened at the start of the match.
"Thank you to Karolina for being a great sport and best of luck to her for the rest of the tournament."
Swiatek revealed she had a close call with a fan at an event in Poland in the past and that players should be on alert in public settings to detect, and report, any threat as early as possible.
“We were able to avoid one incident that might have been scary back in the day when I was hosting my own event in Poland. There are fans that are kind of, I don't know, everywhere. But I'm pretty sure that they don't have any bad intentions,” said the 23-year-old Swiatek.
“Obviously we are public persons, so we should always keep our eyes open and ready to react if we feel uncomfortable. I'm sure it must have been tough for Emma.”
Swiatek added that there are precautionary measures players can take, like delaying posting photos or videos to social media until after they’ve left a certain location, so members of the public wouldn’t be able to track them down.
Russian teenager Mirra Andreeva, who will face Swiatek in the Dubai quarter-finals on Thursday, revealed disturbing threats she received online when she was still competing on the ITF circuit.
Hate messages from sports bettors is almost a daily occurrence for tennis players online and it’s a problem no one has figured out a way to eliminate so far.
Andreeva says she feels safe at tournaments and that she is always surrounded by at least three or four security guards when signing autographs at events, but admits a message she received once on social media has stuck with her.
“Of course, after every loss I think every player receives a bunch of hateful messages,” revealed the 17-year-old.
“I remember once when I was young, when I was 14 years old, I was playing one of my first ITF tournaments and I received a message after my loss that, ‘Look around, because I'm going to find you and I'm going to cut your arms’.
“That was still the one that I remember until today.”
