Taylor Fritz forced to delete post as Joao Fonseca comment prompts big backlash

Taylor Fritz was forced to delete an Instagram comment about Joao Fonseca after receiving a barrage of hate from other users. The two players did battle in Eastbourne earlier this week, with the match taking place over two days due to bad lighting. Fritz eventually secured a 6-3 6-7 7-5 victory over the Brazilian teenager to set up a quarter-final meeting with fellow American player Marcos Giron.

After the match, Fritz left a comment on Instagram poking fun at the growing hype around Fonseca. The latter is arguably the brightest prospect in men's tennis, having burst onto the scene at this year's Australian Open before winning the Argentina Open. Fritz joked about Fonseca's popularity with a cheeky comment under a video of their match in Eastbourne.

He wrote: "Commenting this before watching points. Betting this is 80 per cent Fonseca highlights, maybe one/two points of me winning." After watching the video, Fritz returned to say: "Update I was right."

Fritz was clearly being tongue-in-cheek with no malicious intent, but his comments still drew a huge backlash from some of Fonseca's supporters. It prompted the American to delete his posts before taking to X (formerly Twitter) with a pointed message.

Responding to a fan who had posted a screenshot of the deleted comments, Fritz said: "It's crazy how people have zero sense of humour and take everything so seriously, it was meant to be funny like pls chill."

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It comes after Fritz turned the air blue while giving some strong views on the topic of on-court coaching. Before facing Fonseca, he called for the practice to be banned in order to stop coaches from micro-managing their players during matches.

"I think it's bad for the game," said Fritz. "Yeah, the game of tennis, it's definitely bad. If fans could hear that stuff, maybe that's more entertaining, but we don't even do that anyway.

"Tennis is an individual sport. Why can someone else tell me what to do when the strategy of tennis is such a big part of the game, understanding what my opponent's doing?

"How is it fair that someone... if they're not smart enough to figure that out, they need to change what they're doing. it's complete bulls*** that someone can tell them what to do.

"I just think the mind games that are going on during the match is a big part of tennis. Why would we, you know, lose that? I talk to my coach during matches, but I don't think I'm ever talking to him, like, asking him: 'What do I do?'.

"I'm telling him what I see and what I think and that he's almost just more so giving me a confirmation. I think it's bad."

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