{"id":189276,"date":"2025-10-04T08:47:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T08:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/189276\/"},"modified":"2025-10-04T08:47:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T08:47:09","slug":"lorenzo-musetti-booed-off-court-after-offensive-chinese-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/189276\/","title":{"rendered":"Lorenzo Musetti booed off court after offensive Chinese comments"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lorenzo Musetti was booed off the court by Chinese tennis<\/a> fans after he was forced to retire hurt against American Lerner Tien, with comments made days earlier coming back to haunt him.<\/p>\n

The Italian was forced to retire at 4-6, 6-3, 0-3 due to a thigh injury in the quarter-finals at the China Open but the crowd was not in a forgiving mood as he shook Tien’s hand and left the court.<\/p>\n

It’s not unusual for fans to boo when a player retires hurt in tennis, but one can be sure the negative reaction to Musetti had more to do with remarks made on court days earlier.<\/p>\n

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Musetti was annoyed by coughing in the crowd during his round-of-32 win against Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard in Beijing, where he shouted “these (expletive) Chinese are always coughing.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Musetti made the comments earlier in the tournament.\u00a0VCG via Getty Images<\/p>\n

He then made a gesture to the crowd and pointed to his throat. That outburst prompted a flurry of outrage on social media, with people commenting on one of his previous Instagram posts to accuse Musetti of being a racist, along with insults and slurs against the Italian culture.<\/p>\n

“I am truly sorry. I respect you deeply, I feel at home here, and I value the warmth and kindness I have always received from you,” the 23-year-old Italian said in a message he posted on social media before his quarter-final clash.<\/p>\n

“I would like to sincerely apologise for what I said in frustration yesterday during my match.<\/p>\n

“My words were directed only at a few individuals in the crowd who were coughing repeatedly and disturbing the play. They were never, in any way, meant for the Chinese people. It happened in a moment of stress and tension in the second tiebreak, but still, this is no excuse at all.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Musetti was surpassed by Alex de Minaur in the rankings after retiring hurt.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

He added: “I realise that the way I expressed myself was wrong and inappropriate, and it hurt many Chinese fans’ feelings.”<\/p>\n

Speaking after retiring hurt to Tien, Musetti confirmed the injury was no serious.<\/p>\n

“I’m very sorry because I had played an excellent first set against a very dangerous opponent,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I was managing the match in the best way and I’m disappointed with how the clash ended, I definitely had a good chance to reach the semi-finals and earn more points.<\/p>\n

“I started to feel discomfort in my left leg at the beginning of the second set and I started to play more passively, then the extent of the problem worsened in the following games. I don’t think it’s a serious injury and I hope to recover in time for the Shanghai tournament.”<\/p>\n

Musetti became the latest athlete to apologise for disrespecting Chinese fans.<\/p>\n

American tennis star Taylor Townsend apologised on September 17 for making disparaging comments about Chinese food<\/a> before the United States played Kazakhstan at the Billie Jean King Cup Finals in Shenzhen, China.<\/p>\n

Townsend had posted videos of local dishes including bullfrogs and turtles and joked she would need to “talk to HR” about the quality of the food.<\/p>\n

She took to Instagram again to apologise after facing a backlash online and said “everyone has been so kind and so gracious.”<\/p>\n

Meantime, Australian Alex de Minaur surpassed Musetti in the race to the 2025 ATP Finals, which will be staged in Turin, Italy.<\/p>\n

De Minaur moved into seventh place in Beijing when he defeated world No.19 Jakub Mensik in 29 minutes, after the latter retired hurt at 4-1 in the first set.<\/p>\n

He faces world No.2 Jannik Sinner in the semi-finals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lorenzo Musetti was booed off the court by Chinese tennis fans after he was forced to retire hurt…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189277,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-189276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}