Tennis, Stakhovsky against Tipsarevic and Troicki for an exhibition in Russia

“Enjoy the money”, “Instagram clown”, “Mister Instagram free fighter”. Not exactly an exchange of kindnesses and hugs, what Sergiy Stakhovsky, a former Ukrainian tennis player who enlisted to defend his nation from the Russian invasion, published on his social profiles after an “exchange of views”, via Whatsapp, with the Serbs Viktor Troicki and Janko Tipsarevic. Stakhovsky did not like, let’s say, their involvement in the “Northern Palmyra Trophies”, an exhibition that is taking place in St. Petersburg. A long-announced tournament that sees six teams divided into two groups of three and made up by drawing lots with a player in the ATP ranking, a player in the WTA ranking, a player captain, and which sees the participation of many Russians, such as Aslan Karatsev, from the ‘former top 5 Nikolay Davydenko, Evgeny Donskoy, Anastasia Potapova, Anastasia Myskina, Svetlana Kuznetsova. Also present were the Kazakh Yulia Putintseva, Russian by birth, the Spaniard Pedro Martinez, the Serbs Troicki, Tipsarevic and Laslo Djere, the Hungarians Marton Fucsovics and Anna Bondar.

The messages

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Stakhovsky, who in recent months has been extremely critical of the players who, according to him, did not support the Ukrainian cause enough, expressed his disappointment via Whatsapp to Troicki and Tipsarevic, who did not take it very well and had no difficulty in responding in a rather harsh way. “Being in my grandparents’ country is priceless – reads the message attributed to Troicki -. You are just a clown on Instagram who confuses sport and politics. This has nothing to do with war, but since you talk about it, the My country has been through all this shit and never been supported.” Even tougher, but along the same lines, Tipsarevic: “How about this, Mister Instagram freedom fighter? Have you or your family ever protested or boycotted events when NATO bombed my nation, my family, my people about twenty years ago?”. The reference is what happened in Serbia in 1999. Stakhovsky at this point posted screenshots of these conversations on Twitter with a message, “The opinion of the Serbs”, and together with the supportive responses, he also attracted several criticisms, both for the gesture and for having generalized the opinion of the Serbs in this way. Novak Djokovic, for example, after the outbreak of war in Ukraine, sent a message to Stakhovsky offering all his help and his support.