And Sir Andy Murray<\/a> has said he is trying to keep his children away from social media and backed calls for more action to prevent abuse of sport stars.<\/p>\n“My first death threat was at 18,” Watson told BBC Sport at a Wimbledon media event on Friday. “I told my friend [American tennis player] Sloane Stephens at the time. <\/p>\n
“The thing that shocked me the most, but also kind of made me feel better – because I told her I was scared as this person told me he was watching me and was going to kill me – was that she said ‘girl, don’t worry, I get these all the time’.<\/p>\n
“I’m smiling now after so many years and such a long career. I receive abuse daily, but it is all in perspective. <\/p>\n
“It is all just sad people who have nothing better going in their lives than to sit behind their computer or phone and write that.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think anyone in their right mind would abuse someone online they have never met. It just goes over my head, it is just madness.”<\/p>\n
Watson is preparing for Wimbledon and will face Danish 23rd seed Clara Tauson in the first round of the singles draw, having been handed a wildcard. <\/p>\n
She won the Wimbledon mixed doubles title in 2016 with Finland’s Henri Kontinen and the pair again reached the final 12 months later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"British tennis player Heather Watson says she has received social media abuse “daily” during her career and had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[79,1068,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-219813","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114757872158021767","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}