Casper Ruud has plenty of thoughts when it comes to the tennis community on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
The world No.5 has labeled some of the comments made by what he describes as ‘so-called tennis experts’ as insane but didn’t specifically name any individuals. Ruud himself has been criticized in the past, especially during the first part of this season when he failed to win back-to-back matches at five consecutive tournaments. Something he later linked with his decision to play a series of exhibition matches across South America during the off-season instead of training.
Ruud spoke about the only community on Monday following his 7-6(5), 3-6, 6-4, 7-6(5), win over Emilo Nava in the first round of the US Open. He is one of only a few players to regularly interact with fans on X but admits social media has both its positives and negatives.
“I read a bunch of these, like, so-called tennis experts and their opinions, and it’s just insane,” he said.
“It annoys me in a way, because I feel like if you haven’t played professionally in the past, most of them have no clue what they are talking about.’
“Their opinions, for fans, if anyone listens to what I’m saying, I would just not take more than maybe 5% of what so-called tennis experts on Twitter say as good info because it’s just not the way it goes.’
“I could probably reply to many other things, but I just leave it, because it’s just interesting to see how people just exaggerate all the time on social media about anything. You go from being the best player in the world to the worst player in the history from one week to another, and it shouldn’t be taken seriously.”
Ruud currently has a following of more than 87,000 people on X compared to 599,000 followers on Instagram. However, he says he tried to limit his time on social media which he says can be ‘wicked’ at times.
“Sometimes I like to interact (with others on social media) because I feel like sometimes my opinion can matter, but it’s more I have to be really annoyed to actually take the time to actually reply to someone,” he explained.
“It’s a wicked place to spend too much time because reading about yourself is not really nice always.’
“I take it with a smile, but sometimes I guess I can’t control myself. It’s easy to kind of communicate to other fans or haters, if you want to call them that. It’s worth it sometimes, but it can be dangerous to spend too much time there, that’s for sure.”
Ruud, who has won 200 Tour-level matches so far in his career, will play China’s Zhang Zhizhen in the next round.
