Panna Udvardy, the world No. 95, has raised concerns over threats of violence she received on her personal phone ahead of a WTA match in Turkey. The WTA Tour has told players that these threats are not the result of a personal data breach.
Udvardy is the second WTA Tour player to discuss such threats in the past week.
Threats Sent Before Match
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.
The message, sent ahead of her meeting with Ukraine’s Anhelina Kalinina in Antalya, Turkey, threatened to kidnap her mother. It also stated that the person responsible for the message had details of where her parents and grandmother live.
Photos of Udvardy’s family accompanied the message, as well as a photo of a hand gun and the threat that “we have two groups near Hungary ready for war if necessary.”
Udvardy’s Response and WTA Action
Udvardy said she panicked and forwarded the messages to her parents, the supervisor, and the WTA player relations team. She also emailed the social media team at the WTA and could not sleep for two hours.
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.
According to Udvardy, the supervisor told her that there was an investigation into a possible leak of players’ personal data, which, the supervisor said, 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.
Udvardy said that the tour’s safeguarding team had also told her that the gun photo was an old one, which implied that the person sending the message did not actually a possess a firearm.
“I don’t see how that’s better,” she said.
WTA Responds to Concerns
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 organisation sent an email to players following Udvardy’s reporting of the threats against her. The email stated that there had not been an official WTA data breach.
The email also stated that the FBI is contributing to an investigation into the provenance of the threatening messages. It also instructed players to immediately contact the tour’s safeguarding team in the event of receiving threatening messages, whether on personal phones or s
The organisation has instructed players to immediately contact the tour’s safeguarding team in the event of receiving threatening messages.