Taylor Fritz on Friday beat Andy Murray in the Round of 16 of the Citi Open in Washington. The match went the distance as Murray won the first set in a tiebreaker, only for Fritz to bounce back and win the next two. However, that gave enough time for some activists to storm onto the arena to endorse climate change. Coming from various organizations, these activists displayed banners, tossed oversized balls on the tennis court and chanted many slogans that stopped play for a short period of time.
After the match, Fritz reacted to the same and didn’t take the interruption too kindly, which is expected of most tennis players. He also slammed the protestors by claiming that rather than making the desired impact on him, they actually made him want to travel more in jets. Not one to mince words, the American top seed has invited controversy once again.
Taylor Fritz has some advice for protestors
Some of the chants and slogans were hard-hitting, which took at both the tournament’s primary sponsors, Mubadala and Citi. One of them included – “Business as usual is a climate disaster,” while the other was shouting loudly on the court, ““Stop funding fossil fuels, Citi stop now!”
Citi, the global financial services leader hailing from the United States, has been accused over the years of being one of the banks which has pledged $300 billion for supporting corporates who require or use fossil fuels for their projects. Both the sponsors have been accused by the protestors of greenwashing, i.e. providing a false sense of security through marketing and PR about protecting the environment while their activities are completely the opposite.
Eventually, ground security had to intervene and forced the protestors to leave the venue. Taylor Fritz was not sympathetic to the protestors’ plight and was quoted as saying in a press conference –
“I understand that they protest, but there has to be a better way. I don’t understand who’s going to support a cause when what they’re doing is ruining someone’s good time. It doesn’t make sense to me. It’s annoying when they do it, we all want to watch tennis. I jokingly said that makes me want to travel on jets even more. I think they support a good cause, but the way they do it is annoying to everyone.”
Mubadala is a United Arab Emirates-backed sovereign wealth fund which has its interests in the Silicon Valley. They previously have had an interest in tennis as every year, they hold an ATP event prior to the Australian Open in January. This year, they opted to go bigger by joining hands with Citi for the tournament in Washington, which for the first time in tennis history, is both an ATP and WTA Tour event being held simultaneously worth 500 points and equal prize money.
Protests in tennis are nothing new
Climate change is said to be a serious environmental issue and tennis has been used as an avenue to protest due to the global popularity of the game. At the Wimbledon 2023 Championships in London recently, 3 Just Stop Oil supporters ransacked Court 18 in two different protests and threw orange-colored confetti and jigsaw puzzle pieces onto the court. On the other hand, many protestors from different organizations protested outside the Wimbledon park, slamming the tournament’s organizers for bringing Barclays on board as a sponsor.
Like Citi, the UK-based Barclays too has been accused of being a financial services leader which supports fossil fuel projects across the globe. A few years ago, teen environmentalist Greta Thunberg publicly slammed Swiss tennis great Roger Federer for his sponsorship deal with Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s leading financial services company which has also been accused of financing different projects that harm the environment.
