- Alexander Zverev has denied accusations of abuse by two different women
- Morgan Riddle made a series of posts – later deleted – which appeared to refer to the German player, who lost to Riddle’s boyfriend Taylor Fritz on Monday
- Riddle has now looked to explain her decision to delete on her Instagram story
Taylor Fritz’s girlfriend Morgan Riddle has broken her silence after she deleted Instagram posts seemingly referring to his opponent Alexander Zverev’s allegations of abuse.
Riddle, a social media influencer who has 17.2million likes on TikTok and is working in conjunction with Wimbledon to produce content, deleted an Instagram video that showed her enjoying a drink with the caption ‘when your man wins 4 the girls.’
Earlier, while the match was unfolding, she also posted a picture of the court to her story and wrote, ‘cheer loud ladies,’ since taken down as well.
Fans quickly looked to join the dots to suggest Riddle was indirectly referring to Fritz’s opponent Zverev, who was last year accused in court documents of physically abusing a woman in 2020.
Last month he agreed to a settlement in the case, detailing that he would pay Brenda Patea, the mother of his child, £184,148, but he was found not guilty of any wrongdoing (Patea publicly identified herself as the victim in the case).
Less than 24 hours on Riddle has now explained to her 320,000 Instagram followers why she hastily deleted her posts.
‘Regarding my stories yesterday… i took them down as soon as i realized the misunderstanding and how blown out of proportion they had become by the media,’ she said.
‘They were not about anything that’s happened off the tennis court & there’s no bad blood between anyone.
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‘Super proud of T [Taylor] for the match yesterday, thank you to the crowd for the support & looking forward to tomorrow.’
A row broke out following the match as Zverev took aim at people in Fritz’s box, which many concluded to being a criticism of Riddle.
After the five-set match, which saw Fritz advance to the final eight at Wimbledon, the two players had a tense exchange at the net as Zverev said some words to his opponent.
The German said afterwards that he was upset with some people in Fritz’s box who ‘may not be from the tennis world.’
‘His team is extremely respectful. I think his coach, his physio, also his second coach, they’re extremely respectful,’ Zverev said.
‘I think there’s some other people that maybe are in the box that are not maybe from the tennis world, that are not maybe from particularly watching every single match. They were a bit over the top.’
Riddle appeared in good spirits at the grounds on Tuesday morning, doing some filming work with the team at Wimbledon as she took to an empty Centre Court with Rufus the Hawk.
The row was still rumbling on into the morning, despite boyfriend Fritz attempting to diffuse it.
Fritz sat down for an interview with The Tennis Channel to shed more light on the feud late on Monday night.
‘I think he was a little upset about my team members cheering for me when he was injured but he said: “It’s nothing to do with you. You’re all good…” Whatever, it’s all good.’
Fritz added: ‘I wasn’t wishing him a flight home so.’
Last October, the Berlin-Tiergarten court issued a penalty order and a fine of around £381,000 against Zverev, who has denied Patea’s claims of abuse. He called the order ‘complete bulls***’ a month later.
Patea told German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung that Zverev choked her during an argument. Zverev has also been accused of domestic abuse by Olga Sharypova, a fellow tennis player and another ex-girlfriend of his.
Sharypova made the allegations – also denied by Zverev – in 2020, accusing him of punching her in the face and smothering her with a pillow.
The ATP investigated the claims (via an outside firm) for 15 months but ultimately did not discipline Zverev on the basis of insufficient evidence.