Thanasi Kokkinakis, Dominic Thiem and Denis Shapovalov sat down for UTS to discuss a myriad of topics including doping as well as Tennis Twitter.
All three had differing stories of their brushes with the platform now known as X with Shapovalov and Kokkinakis in particular reacting fairly scathingly saying that the platform to voice opinion is now borderline unusable without abuse.
"I feel like it's so tough now. Like even on Twitter, you can't even express your opinions without people completely losing it you know," said Shapovalov.
"I feel like Twitter people just hate and whatever opinion you have, they just lash out. You can't have a normal conversation."
"You're better off just like shouting," responded Kokkinakis. "People cannot respond without emotion," said Shapovalov.
"As soon as you say anything, some one gets triggered. Tennis Twitter if you like Djokovic, everyone and their little Lacoste emojis is there for you. They're just abusing you dude," chimed in Kokkinakis. "If there's a Rafa one, there's like a bull or something."
The Canadian in particular suffered abuse for his thoughts on the Jannik Sinner case which were more surrounding tennis as a whole and he lamented the flack he received.
"I made a comment about the Sinner case. To me it had nothing to do with Sinner, it was just the principle that it should be the same for all the players. But so many Italian fans losing it, just insane," added Shapovalov.
But also Dominic Thiem also got some back in COVID for not wanting to give certain players financial aid when he in reality did more than most in his view to support rising stars.
"I got so much s*** for my tweets about Covid aid. I said I don't want to give money to Futures players because some of them are not professional. At that time, I was supporting a young Austrian player. I was supporting him at the end with over 100k, I wanted to decide who I help."
Shapovalov, Kokkinakis and Thiem discuss Tennis Twitter 🤣 pic.twitter.com/jcyVKLtLiD
— José Morgado (@josemorgado) December 4, 2024