Tennis: on the courts, incidents are increasing between Ukrainians and Russians

The trap has slowly closed on the WTA.

By accepting, from March 2022, only a few days after the invasion of the Russian army in Ukraine (February 24), the presence of Russian and Belarusian players on the courts, on the sole condition of evolving under a neutral banner, the women's circuit was exposed to the risk of seeing incidents multiply between players from belligerent countries.

If the men's circuit is for the moment generally spared by these snags, the WTA attends, powerless, to the aggressive speeches and the hostile demonstrations on the courts.

The last hitch dates from this Thursday, in Miami at the end of the meeting between the Russian Anastasia Potapova and the Ukrainian Marta Kostyuk, largely defeated (6-1, 6-3).

Icy atmosphere at the end of the match after an arm wrestling under high tension but without incident so far: Kostyuk (38th player in the world) refused to shake hands with her opponent.

It must be said that the latter had…

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