World No.164 Eugenie Bouchard, who retired from the first round of qualifying at the French Open, posted what was largely understood as a disrespectful tweet about Marco Cecchinato, Italian player that defeated Novak Djokovic in today’s men’s singles quarterfinals, and the tennis Twitter community was quick to slam the former world No.5 Canadian for her comment.
The 24-year-old explained that she didn’t mean to insult the ATP player and genuinely admired his achievement, which was articulated by her clapping hands emoji, but the number of negative comments is overwhelming and I have to say that some are very funny, even though they may be mean.
Here are some responses criticizing Genie for her tweet:
Not all the people understood Genie’s tweet as an insult to Cecchinato, so there were also many tweets that defended the WTA player, one of the most insightful being this one:
Here’s how Genie later explained her intention and defended herself:
I myself think Genie should’ve realized that the tweet was ambiguous, but I admire her for not deleting the tweet after all the negative comments. How do you understand her tweet about Cecchinato?
I don’t think her intention of this tweet were negative because of the use of the playful emojis including the clapping figure. Obviously she could’ve said it in a better way in which it cannot be interpreted in 2 different ways. Players know going into social media that there are the fans and the haters and they just simply have to deal with it because this is an issue that will not go away no matter how hard you try. I think Eugenie only made it worse by posting the tweets defending herself because she made herself seem even more sarcastic. The number one thing for her is that she needs to rethink how she wants her tweets to sound so that way this doesn’t happen again
I Ithink she could have said “Cecchinato is an exciting player who is so fearless!” and she would have been raked over the coals. It doesn’t matter what she says or does—she’s a target of people who need targets. And while I’m far from pleased about her attack on Maria, I’m sick of all the abuse that’s heaped on her.
It’s pretty obvious Genie meant no harm here, so I don’t care two cents about her tweet concerning Cecchinato. All I know is, it was a complete joy to watch this guy play his game although I was rooting for Novak. Cecchinato was practically an unknown, and now he’s the talk of the town. He’s the dark horse Nadal & the others better watch out for. On the other hand, Nadal is without a doubt the GOAT of the clay court. But in the meantime, “Go, gorgeous Cecchinato and congrats!”
No, I really do not read her tweet as negative or even ambiguous… it’s more like “oh shit, who IS this guy I ‘ve never heard of, but he is AMAZING!!!”! And sure he was! Of course he is not as well known as Novak and a lot of people haven’t heard his name before (including yours truly) but his performance was truly impressive and he has made it sure that those who didn’t know his name do it now. Congratulations!!!
That’s the thought I had about this guy, Cecchinato, but I am not his peer like Genie is..I really don’t think she meant any harm. As for Mr. Cecchinato, I hope his run ends in the semis, because I really, really, really want to see Dominic Thiem make it to his first Grand Slam final!
As I heard, Cecchinato had never before this year’s Paris won a main-draw match at a Grand Slam! As for Bouchard, when you post regularly on social media, every now and then you are bound to make a mistake and post something that you didn’t carefully think through. The clapping hands emoji convinces me that she meant no harm.
She is saying it the way you might when you were speaking to another person, and I don’t think if you said that it would sound disrespectful. But for something that is going to thousands of people, and as a person that knows what she says will be watched and debated, she should probably word it a bit more carefully.