Case study Jay Clarke: I expect racist slurs now

Jay Clarke is a 19-year-old from Derby, who rose up the rankings last year to a career high of No 219 in December. He regularly receives racist messages on social media. “I get abuse, normally including death threats, after every match I lose.”

Alot of black guys get racist abuse straight away, like Dustin Brown gets a lot more than me because people bet a lot more on his matches than they do on mine. When I can, I speak to the other black players about it.

Every single player gets messages like these but race is always the first thing they go to with me. It must all be to do with gambling. That’s the only thing I can think of because they don’t know me or really care if I win or lose.

People always send me pictures of monkeys but I’ve had way worse than that. When I was in the States, they sent one to my mum about me when I was losing a match. I don’t want to repeat what they said.

It’s one thing if I get it but going to my family as well, that’s pretty bad. I’ve made reports to the social media companies. Someone on Twitter wrote to the college of one troll who abused my family.

I am not sure what else can be done. Social media is so open and obviously it’s a great way of attracting sponsors and stuff like that. Plus, for people trying to follow your progress, you don’t want to have a closed profile because then they can’t see it. It’s one of those things – maybe it will get better, but it’s tough. At the start it was difficult because I was thinking, “It’s just a tennis match”, but honestly now I expect it. The fact that you can read messages that say ‘I hope you and your entire family die’, and not be surprised is pretty crazy I guess.