As someone who has on twitter for over three years now, I know twitter very well and love it dearly. I love sending out irrational, angry tweets to my 100+ followers who could probably care less what I have to say. But, as some random, unimportant dude who's tweets really mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. I've made tweets that, if I had any sort of stature in society, would get me ridiculed with sponsors pulling any support of me they previously had.
But, the good news? I don't have to worry about that because, as I said before, I am essentially Joe Schmo. However, for players on the WTA and ATP Tours, one is constantly in the spotlight. As a professional tennis player, whatever you say will be twisted, convoluted, and you will be blasted for something that you totally did not mean to say. But, in the case of some players on tour, no twisting is needed and what players say on twitter is quite powerful.
Perhaps the biggest example of someone who probably needs to censor themselves more on Twitter is Ivo Karlovic. We all surely remember Ivo Karlovic's passive-aggressive tweet following Serena William's 19th Grand Slam victory in Melbourne. When Serena closed out Maria Sharapova in straight sets to win the tournament, in showing her excitement, Williams started jumping up and down and hopped over to her Player's Box. Karlovic, upon seeing Serena's celebration, sent out a nasty tweet that said "Earthquake in Melbourne #jumping". The implication here certainly seems to be that Serena is overweight and her jumping is causing the ground to shake.
So, what were the implications of such a tweet? Well, of the direct responses to the tweet, some of them thought it was funny (but did not necessarily agree with what Ivo had to say) while many others ripped into Ivo and thought it was anything but amusing. In addition, tennis website tennis.com considered it a lowpoint and the tweet generated A LOT of discussion on the popular women's tennis forum tennisforum.com, in which, based on the first couple of pages that I read for writing this post, were not favorable. In any case, it was very inappropriate of Karlovic to (whether intentional or not) deflect the spotlight from Serena and onto himself.
This was not the only case of Karlovic making a spectacle of himself with jabs on twitter. Just last Sunday, Ivo lashed out in a tweet against Roger Federer, saying, "Roger said its dark so it's dark". What Karlovic completely ignored is the fact that it was cloudy out, and therefore would get darker earlier than usual, and also that Monfils could have probably used the rest, given that the world later learned he was sick for that match with Roger. So, while Karlovic had been trying to take a swipe at Federer, he ended up looking pretty stupid himself. Karlovic also has had many more cases in which he has written rude tweets, so he certainly has a track record with abusing his twitter account for the sake of putting down others.
So, why am I bringing up athletes and twitter today? This is because, today, I read a very rude and disrespectful tweet from Tara Moore, who is also on the WTA Tour (but is lightyears behind Serena in terms of quality of play, and I now know, in terms of quality of individual). It was learned before the match that Serena was very sick for her Semifinals match against Timea Bacsinszky at the French Open. Serena was very down on court, and was clearly suffering even more so than during the Australian Open this year. However, Moore was not convinced about Serena's performance and sent out a tweet in which she said, "Not only is serena one of the best women players of all time, she's also one of the best actresses #suckitup #learnhowtolose #pathetic". In my opinion, the hashtags at the end of the tweet are where Moore really crossed over the line and made a rude tweet into a disrespectful one.
So, how did this tweet go over for Moore? Well, almost every reply was negatively directed towards Tara, with Moore later even tweeting that death threats were coming her way. Moore tweet also got coverage at theguardian because of her tweet, which also reported that even injured tennis player Laura Robson sent out a tweet dismissing Moore's "#pathetic". All of this controversy over the 395th ranked women's player in the world in the live rankings! This should really not be happening and the amount of attention payed to Moore is certainly not proportional to the amount of attention she has received (almost entirely negative) due to this tweet.
So, a player like Moore should be desperately working to make her way up the rankings in order to really try to make it on the tour. Instead of sending out a nasty tweet about, arguably, the best women's tennis player of all time, she should be making sure the spotlight is off of her, so that she has no distractions on her quest to be the best that she can be. And the same can be said for Karlovic, as well. Since winning Delray Beach in February, Ivo has won a total of three matches. In the entire clay court season, he won a total of one match. And, when he sent out the tweet regarding Serena and an earthquake, he had made a Second Round exit in the Australian Open. Again, like Moore, instead of drawing attention to himself, Karlovic should be wanting to deflect all of the attention off oh himself and really focus in on his tennis.
I must say, though, I give a little more leeway to Moore regarding this issue (as of now) than I do to Karlovic. This is because Karlovic (as previously mentioned) definitely has a long history with sending out rude and hurtful tweets, where, as far as I can tell, Moore seems to be a "first time offender". And while she is an adult, and thus is totally responsible for whatever decisions she makes, perhaps she didn't quite realize just how bad her tweet had and the subsequent impact it would have, while Karlovic seems to tweet nasty things all of the time without batting an eyebrow. However, both Karlovic and Moore should feel ashamed about how they have presented themselves on their twitter account.
In any case, the main lesson here is that, for professional tennis players, twitter is very powerful. For players those who tweet with class and grace it can be a great way to connect with their fans. But, for those who do not conduct themselves in that manner on twitter, perhaps it's time to shut the account down. Maybe Ivo Karlovic and Tara Moore's twitter accounts need to be deactivated.
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