'Think Before You Say Stuff': World No. 1 Rages At Reporter In U.S. Open Presser
· Yahoo Sports
World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka saved some of her toughest shots for a reporter in a heated press conference Wednesday at the U.S. Open.
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The top seed and defending champ, who easily dispatched Polina Iatcenko in the second round, blasted Matt Futterman of the New York Times-owned Athletic for a question about her activities of the previous week.
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Before the dust cleared, Sabalenka pointedly instructed the reporter, “Think before you say stuff.”
Things did get tense:
Like this article? Keep independent journalism alive. Support HuffPost.“How are you finding like your mood once now that the tournament has started? Obviously, last week it’s lots of parties and fun and stuff like that,” the journalist asked.
“You guys are like a joke,” she snapped back. “Parties, fun. Like like why would you even say that? Why would you even think about that? Like what kind of question is that? Just because I posted like some activities with brands and you think that I’ve been partying, not training?”
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“I’m not suggesting that you’re partying,” Futterman said. “... I’m saying that there are a lot of events and things like that. I’m not saying you go to the parties.”
“You literally said that,” she replied.
The reporter attempted to clarify to the room what he meant and recast his query: “So now that the tournament started, do you find you’re getting quite serious and combative?”
“Oh, yeah. I wasn’t serious before that,” she answered sarcastically. “Next question.”
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“Think before you say stuff,” she snapped before moving on.
Futterman wrote later on social media that both Sabalenka and her agent apologized to him.
It wasn’t the first moment of tension between Sabalenka and reporters at the Open. In a press conference after her first-round victory, the Belarusian star railed against “miserable haters.”