"Disturbing trend continues as Naomi Osaka deals with verbal harassment"

While it seems like golf has been fortunate on the player heckling front of late, it’s worth noting what happened to Naomi Osaka in Indian Wells as a reminder that tennis and golf are different.

Helene Elliott of the LA Times looks at the incident, the history of trouble at this tournament, Osaka’s desire to address the crowd mid-match, and the decision not to eject the heckler.

I found it odd the heckler was not ejected when the timing of the noise impacted the flow of the match. Get ‘em outta there!

Anyway, Elliott writes:

Retired tennis great Martina Navratilova called it “heartbreaking” that someone would insult Osaka and also that Osaka had been affected so deeply. Navratilova also said Osaka would have to “toughen it out somehow” in the future and said Black players Althea Gibson, Chanda Rubin and Zina Garrison had endured tougher experiences in the sport than Osaka has had. It’s tricky telling people how to feel when we’re all shaped by different cultural factors and have different emotional trigger points.

Former men’s tour player Paul Annacone, now a coach and commentator, urged Osaka to prioritize her well-being. “Make sure that’s under control and in an area that she can manage,” he said on a Tennis Channel panel discussion.

“We’ve also all been to sporting events, and we all know that at sporting events you hear stuff and people shout stuff that they probably shouldn’t. … It’s very sad. I hope Naomi and her team can talk about it. I want her to be happy. I want her to play. We want to see her play. We want to see her healthy and feeling really good about things. Don’t let that get through you.”

Crowd outbursts stand out in tennis and in golf, which demand quiet before and during play. At NFL games, one heckler’s voice gets lost among 60,000 others. The same is true on a smaller scale at baseball and hockey games, where conversations, music and in-game promotions make noise a constant and customary background. The NBA invites player-fan interaction because fans are closer to the players than in any other sport. That leads to the sports equivalent of road rage, where fans take out their hostility on the nearest target.

Mercifully, even in the Live Under Par era desperate to see golf get younger and louder, the sport seems more united in having a zero tolerance view of similar outcome-influencing antics. Let’s hope it continues that way.