Williams wants Sandgren to apologise
Controversial American Tennys Sandgren may be out of the Australian Open but Serena Williams has delivered another serve, calling for him to apologise for his past tweets.
Sandgren made a quarterfinal exit on Wednesday and then used his post-match press conference to fire back at his critics.
The world No 97’s run from obscurity to the big stage put a spotlight on his polarising politics as detailed on his Twitter account, most of which has since been deleted.
The tweets included homophobic and anti-abortion comments, supportive exchanges with alt-right figures and his endorsement of ‘‘pizzagate’’, a debunked conspiracy theory that depicted former US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as a child sex-trafficker.
It also aired his volatile history with Williams – he once tweeted that ‘‘any day Serena loses is a good day’’, and he also called a video of her yelling during her match with Roberta Vinci at the 2015 US Open ‘‘disgusting’’.
Williams, who sat out of the Australian Open after the birth of her daughter, hit back this week when she tweeted ‘‘Turns channel’’, when Sandgren took to the court for his quarterfinal match with Korean Hyeon Chung.
Overnight Williams wasn’t finished, tweeting that ‘‘an entire group of people need an apology’’, appearing to interpret his ‘‘disgusting’’ comment as a racist slur about the champion’s skin colour rather than her on-court behaviour.
‘‘I don’t need or want one (an apology). But there is a entire group of people that deserves an apology. I can’t look at my daughter and tell her I sat back and was quiet.’’
After his loss on Wednesday, Sandgren opened his post-match press conference by reading a prepared statement, blaming the media for exploiting his politics.
He said they seek to ‘‘dehumanise with pen and paper and turn neighbour against neighbour’’.
‘‘You would rather perpetuate propaganda machines instead of researching information . . .’’