World No.33 Yulia Putintseva raised concerns about a spectator’s behaviour during her 6-0 6-0 first round defeat to Amanda Anisimova at the Wimbledon. “Can you take him out? I am not going to continue playing until he leaves. These people are dangerous, they are crazy,” Putintseva said during her match as per reports.
“Take him out because maybe he has a knife and he will attack,” she had added to the umpire. Following the incident and the match, the Kazakh player also declined to talk to the media.
Responding to the matter, Wimbledon’s operations director, Michelle Dite said as per the Guardian, “We would rather know about these things, and that is what happened yesterday, and the chair umpire then had some really good communication as planned.”
This was the latest case where the security concerns of tennis players were brought to the light with Emma Raducanu’s stalker incident earlier this year already fresh in everyone’s mind.
The man accused of stalking tennis player Raducanu tried to obtain tickets to Wimbledon but was blocked by the All England Club’s security system, British media had reported last month.
The BBC and others reported that the man tried to apply for tickets through the public ballot for the Grand Slam tournament that starts June 30. His name had been red-flagged.
At the Dubai Championships in February, the man exhibited “ fixated behavior ” toward the 22-year-old Raducanu, who became distressed during a match when she noticed him in the crowd.
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A day earlier, he had left her a letter and took her photograph, which unnerved the 2021 U.S. Open champion.
After seeing the man in the stands, Raducanu took shelter behind the umpire’s chair during her second-round match against Karolina Muchova. Raducanu later said she “ couldn’t see the ball through tears ” and struggled to breathe before approaching the umpire.
The man was ejected from the tournament. He was later detained by Dubai police and signed a document pledging to “maintain distance” from Raducanu, who is ranked No. 36.
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