Spanish tennis player Inigo Cervantes received death threats on Twitter following his upset win over Alexander Zverev in the first round of the German Open in Hamburg on Monday.
Cervantes, ranked as low as number 87 in the world, pulled off a stunning 7-5 7-6 victory against the 27th-ranked Zverev, who was one of the top favourites to win the title here.
Subsequently, the Spaniard’s timeline was bombarded by a person with username @benstennispicks, who warned the tennis player of dire consequences.
“I will kill you and your family. I’ll cut their throats and feed you. Then, I’ll take a dull knife and push it in your eyes,” read the tweets, which were later re-tweeted by the 26-year-old.
This is not the first time that the dark side of social media has come to haunt the sportspersons. Earlier this month, South African Kevin Anderson was also trapped by something similar after his surprise first round defeat to Denis Istomin at Wimbledon.
The root cause of this is believed to lie in the world of betting, where people put buckets of money behind their favourites. When the result sometimes upends, they rush to enmesh the blameless players via public domains.
