A women’s tennis player has criticised the WTA Tour’s response after she received threats of violence on her personal phone. Panna Udvardy, the world No. 95, is the second WTA Tour player to discuss such threats in the past week.
The tour has told players that these threats are not the result of a personal data breach.
Threats Sent Before Tournament
Udvardy received a message from a phone number with a United Kingdom country code. The message instructed her to lose a match at a tournament one rung below the main tour.
Sent before her match with Ukraine’s Anhelina Kalinina in Antalya, Turkey, the message threatened to kidnap her mother. It also stated that the sender had details of where her parents and grandmother live.
The message included photos of Udvardy’s family, as well as a photo of a hand gun and the threat that “we have two groups near Hungary ready for war if necessary.”
“At midnight I’m panicking, I’m alone in the hotel. I was really scared, so I forwarded these messages to my parents,” Udvardy said via voice message.
“I forwarded it also to the supervisor and the WTA player relations team. I wrote an email to the social media team at the WTA. I could not sleep for two hours.”
WTA’s Response
Udvardy said that when she went to the WTA tournament supervisor’s office, she was told that she was not the first player to receive these kinds of messages.
She said that the supervisor told her that there was an investigation into a possible leak of players’ personal data. The supervisor said this explained the recent prevalence of messages sent to players’ personal phones.
“The WTA tried to downplay the situation a little bit. I didn’t see any extra security being placed or any kind of real concern,” Udvardy said.
“The supervisor told me, ‘Oh, it happened to other players, so don’t worry.’
“OK, but I am worried — it’s my phone number, my personal data, who knows what else they have?”
Udvardy said that the tour’s safeguarding team had also told her that the gun photo was an old one, implying that the person sending the message did not actually possess a firearm.
“I don’t see how that’s better,” she said.
A source briefed on the Antalya tournament’s operations said that the supervisor’s comment to Udvardy did not constitute an official statement and was made off the cuff. The source spoke anonymously because they were not authorised to speak publicly.
Investigation Underway
In an email sent to players following Udvardy’s reporting of the threats against her, the WTA said that there had not been an official WTA data breach.
The organisation said that the FBI is contributing to an investigation into the provenance of the threatening messages.
The email also instructed players to immediately contact the tour’s safeguarding team in the event of receiving threatening messages, whether on personal phones or s