{"id":574739,"date":"2025-11-16T19:53:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-16T19:53:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/574739\/"},"modified":"2025-11-16T19:53:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T19:53:11","slug":"tennis-player-eva-lys-says-obsessed-fans-have-sought-out-hotel-room-numbers-and-addresses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/574739\/","title":{"rendered":"Tennis player Eva Lys says \u2018obsessed\u2019 fans have sought out hotel room numbers and addresses"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Athletic has live coverage of Carlos Alcaraz vs Jannik Sinner<\/a> in the final of the 2025 ATP Tour Finals<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Eva Lys<\/a>, the world No. 40 from Germany, has said that people have \u201cgot hold of the addresses of training facilities, hotels and even room numbers\u201d during the course of her tennis career.<\/p>\n

In a year when Emma Raducanu<\/a> and Karol\u00edna Muchov\u00e1<\/a> were both affected on court after spotting an alleged stalker or fixated person, and Iga \u015awi\u0105tek was verbally harassed<\/a> at a training session, Lys described multiple experiences of being stalked<\/a> in an interview with German newspaper Die Zeit<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWas it related to lost bets? I don\u2019t know. They were clearly obsessed with me. That crossed all boundaries,\u201d Lys said.<\/p>\n

A WTA spokesperson said that \u201cthe safety and well-being of our players are of utmost importance to the WTA. A dedicated security department, working collaboratively with the tournaments, ensures a secure environment at all WTA events.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur team, together with the tournament organizers, works closely with local authorities, law enforcement and security experts to implement comprehensive measures that prioritize player and spectator safety. As a result, incidents are extremely rare due to the preventative and proactive measures.\u201d<\/p>\n

In February, at the Dubai Tennis Championships, Raducanu broke down in tears mid-match after spotting a man who had given her a letter and asked for a photo the previous day. She had noticed the man at a number of her previous events, and he was subsequently given a restraining order and taken off the list of applicants for Wimbledon ballot<\/a> tickets.<\/p>\n

Six-time Grand Slam champion Iga \u015awi\u0105tek was harassed in Miami a month later, when a man who had made threats online showed up and verbally abused her during practice. On the first day of this year\u2019s Wimbledon, Yulia Putintseva said she wouldn\u2019t continue her first-round match against Amanda Anisimova until a spectator she called \u201cdangerous\u201d and \u201ccrazy,\u201d and who she feared had a knife, had been removed. Putintseva lost the match 6-0, 6-0.<\/p>\n

At the U.S. Open the following month, Muchov\u00e1, the Czech world No. 13, had to wipe away tears and briefly halt her second-round U.S. Open match against Sorana C\u00eerstea. She later explained that she had spotted an ex-boyfriend in the crowd, who she said has a history of showing up \u201cat places where he shouldn\u2019t be.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a special report by The Athletic<\/a> in August, one former WTA executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect relationships in tennis, described the conditions in the sport as being a \u201cperfect storm\u201d for this kind of unwanted attention.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s to do with the individuality of the sport, and then a combination of precociousness, attractiveness and visibility,\u201d the executive said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou put all those things together and women\u2019s tennis is a perfect storm for fixated individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other players have detailed similar experiences. Katie Boulter said she was followed by someone in a car during a tournament; Danielle Collins described dealing with numerous fixated individuals, one of whom called her friends and family at work. Coco Gauff told reporters at the Madrid Open in April that someone tried to follow her and her dad to their home in Florida when she was 15.<\/p>\n

Ahead of representing Germany in the Billie Jean King Cup qualifiers on Friday, Lys also said that the volume of social media abuse she receives makes her \u201cincredibly angry.\u201d She added that while she tries to think they don\u2019t affect her, \u201cthousands of hate messages leave no one unmoved.\u201d<\/p>\n

In June, a joint report released by the WTA and International Tennis Federation (ITF) found that in 2024, 15 cases of abuse toward tennis players were escalated to law enforcement agencies.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have implemented a service for our athletes from Threat Matrix to detect abusive and threatening content, provide rapid threat assessment of personal safety, and support law enforcement agencies in the investigation of the most serious cases,\u201d the WTA spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs social media use becomes more part of an athlete\u2019s profile, we are constantly learning how to evolve our layers of protection in this space.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Friday\u2019s Billie Jean King Cup playoff, Lys was beaten by Turkey\u2019s Zeynep S\u00f6nmez to level the tie at 1-1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Athletic has live coverage of Carlos Alcaraz vs Jannik Sinner in the final of the 2025 ATP…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":574740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[79,25711,1068,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-574739","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-sports-business","10":"tag-tennis","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115561130173056949","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574739","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=574739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}