The 2018 Australian Open men’s singles draw is an unbridled, chaotic mess that has seen highly rated seeded players helplessly rumbled by rank outsiders. And while from an on-court perspective it’s providing some utterly wild viewing, plucking players ranked in the triple digits and putting them under the spotlight is an activity almost guaranteed to unearth some dirt clods.
Tennys Sandgren, an American player ranked somewhere around 97 prior to this year’s tournament, somehow rode a hot hand all the way to a berth in today’s quarter final matchup against fellow bolter and darling of the tournament, Hyeon Chung.
Unlike Chung, who is a precious angel beloved by all, the wheels quickly began falling off Tennys (real name) Australian Open campaign when one inquisitive reporter pried Sandgren about a whole mess of extremely weird Tweets he made on his account that not even remotely revealed his affiliations to Trump, the alt-right movement, and a pretty blatant belief in various Pizzagate-related theories.
What the reporter didn’t pry him about at the time was the time he said that America can’t possibly have a problem with racism because it elected a black president, and that the mainstream media was deliberately not covering “spirit cooking,” aka the Satanic ritual that Hillary Clinton participates in which is a thing that actual human beings genuinely believe to be true.
A normal man with a normal non-poisoned brain.
Sandgren, in perhaps the only smart thing he’s ever done online, realised that this angle was a rolling stone that would refuse to stop gathering moss, so he quickly purged his account of some 18-months worth of dodgy ramblings in a bid to prevent it from derailing whatever success in the Australian Open he’d attain.
‘Course, it didn’t stop anyone from figuring out that he is, to put it lightly, a bit of a knob.
And it CERTAINLY didn’t stop Serena Williams from Tweeting out the mother of all shade at almost the exact moment Sandgren took to the court earlier this afternoon. Observe:
Turns channel
— Serena Williams (@serenawilliams) January 24, 2018
Good god. Serena’s not even playing in the Australian Open this year and she still manages to land shot of the tournament.
For the record Hyeon Chung, the special boy, took care of business against Tennys, steamrolling old mate 6-4 7-6 6-3 to book himself a spot in a semi final.
Tennys, presumably, is now on his way to the burns ward.
