World No.2 Caroline Wozniacki has threatened to boycott the Miami Open after being verbally abused by members of the crowd during this year’s tournament.
The Australian Open champion criticised officials shortly after her second round loss to Monica Puig. Wozniacki said she heard death threats being made to both her and her family. During the match, the crowd was heavily in favour of Olympic champion Puig. Miami has a population of over one million Puerto Ricans. Wozniacki claimed that staff policing the court failed to step in to stop the incident. An allegation tournament director James Blake has disputed.
“During the match people in the crowd threatened my family, wished death upon my mom and dad, called me names that I can’t repeat here and told my fiance’s niece and nephew (who are 10 years old) to sit down,” Wozniacki wrote on her Twitter account shortly after the match.
Speaking about the incident, the Danish player is now considering skipping the tournament all together. She said the situation resulted in her losing sleep days after and left a ‘bad feeling’ in her stomach. Condemning the tournament’s claim that they didn’t hear the abuse said to her and her family.
“I slept horribly for probably four or five days after that, I wasn’t at ease,” said the Danish player.
“I really felt awful. There was a bad feeling in my stomach. David (Lee, her fiancé) was there too and he even was like: ‘This is bad, this is not the way’.
“The experience that I had in Miami was awful and hopefully something we’ll never experience again.”
It is unclear if Wozniacki will go ahead with her boycott. If she did, it would be the most high-profile since that of the Williams sisters. Both players skipped the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells for more than ten years over incidents of racist abuse. Neither Venus or Serena played in the tournament for 14 years.
“I just have to make a decision next year on whether I feel like I want to go back or not. I haven’t made that decision yet.”
Criticism of Blake
Wozniacki has also blasted the management of the situation by Blake, who became the Miami Open tournament director this year. She has accused the former player of failing to act. Pointing out Blake’s own experience of being unfairly treated. In 2015 he was aggressively tackled to the ground by a policeman in New York in what was a case of mistaken identity.
“The way that Miami was, was really not good,” said Wozniacki. “James Blake has been through these things himself and I would have hoped that he would have taken a stance, but he didn’t and that’s that. I’ve just tried to forget the whole thing, but I think it was important that I spoke up and said something about it because I don’t think it was okay.”
Addressing the specific statement that was made by Blake at the time, Wozniacki said she was left feeling that she didn’t have the backing of the tournament.It has been pointed out since that the statement was seeming produced with the help of IMG. The agency which runs the Miami Open.
“That makes sense. Obviously it made me a little bit upset because I didn’t feel like they had the players’ back, or did much other than just try to pretend like everything was beautiful. I have a decision to make once the tournament comes around next year.” She concluded.
Wozniacki will return to action next week at the Istanbul Open in Turkey.
