Ben Shelton revealed the Australian Open organizers accepted his criticism and said they would have held some conversations regarding how on-court interviews get conducted.
If you missed it, the 22-year-old teed off at broadcasters following his quarterfinal win at Melbourne Park, underlining that it was inappropriate for an interviewer to tell him that “Gael Monfils could be your dad” or ask him how it felt knowing that no one would root for him in the semifinal.
Also, Shelton pointed out that the Novak Djokovic – Tony Jones case wasn’t the only instance and also said that he heard Learner Tien also received a disrespectful comment after his win over Daniil Medvedev.
After mentioning all the cases where he felt a player was disrespected, the world No. 20 urged the media to work more on promoting the game instead of putting it down.
Ben Shelton and on-court interviewer© Australian Open/YouTube
On Friday, the American wasn’t interviewed on the court because he lost to Jannik Sinner in the semifinal.
Shelton asked how the Australian Open organizers reacted to his criticism from Wednesday
“Yeah, they were very, like, ‘Well we’re going to have some talks,’” the 22-year-old shared.
“I forget the guy’s name who I talked to. But people have been understanding, supportive of what I said, I guess. It’s not like anything was just that, that bad – especially to me. It was just kind of the cumulative stacking up of incidences is kind of what I saw.
“Haven’t seen anything since. I don’t know if you guys saw anything since, but I thought it’s been pretty good the last couple days but no-one’s really come up to me about it after that press conference.”
After Shelton aired his frustration with the broadcasters, his stance was backed by present but also former players.
It seems that the Australian Open took notice so it definitely wasn’t for nothing.
Tennis World USA