Whether Jelena Ostapenko meant anything more when she said Taylor Townsend had “no class” and “no education” during a heated exchange after their second-round match on Wednesday, Naomi Osaka called the comments “one of the worst things you can say to a black tennis player.”
Osaka was asked about her reaction to the incident following her second-round win at the US Open on Thursday over Hailey Baptiste.
The 2018 and 2020 US Open champion said she saw the heated exchange since it had been “on the TV like every 15 minutes.”
“I mean, it’s really difficult to say,” she said after a momentary pause to collect her thoughts. “It’s obviously one of the worst things that you can say to a black tennis player, in a majority white sport. Granted, I know Taylor and I know how hard she’s worked and I know how smart she is, so that’s the furthest thing from uneducated or anything like that.
“But if you’re like genuinely asking me the history of Ostapenko, I don’t think that’s the craziest thing she’s said, if I’m being honest. I think it’s ill-timing and the worst person you could have ever said it to. And I don’t know if she knows the history of it in America. But I know she’s never gonna say that ever again in her life. But I mean, it was just terrible. That’s just really bad.”
Townsend addressed the issue following the match, but she told reporters that she “didn’t take it in that way” when asked if she felt there were racial undertones to the comment.
She added that it “has been a stigma in our community of being not educated and all of the things when it’s the furthest thing from the truth.”
Ostapenko has denied she was making any racial comments when she said that to Townsend and in an Instagram post on Wednesday night denied she was a racist.
She indicated that her issue had to do with the way Townsend warmed up and then her lack of apology for a net cord that occurred during the match.
“I was NEVER racist in my life and I respect all nations of people in the world, for me it doesn’t matter where you come from,” she wrote. “There are some rules in tennis and unfortunately when the crowd is with you, you can’t use it in disrespectful way to your opponent.”