![\"Destanee](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/85fb3ee632be9cfb0389ce345cda8c9a.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nDestanee Aiava knew it was time to quit her professional tennis career when she began to feel scared stepping onto the court.<\/p>\n
She wasn’t afraid of her opponent, the match or the thousands of spectators watching on around the world.<\/p>\n
Aiava was dreading picking up her phone after the match.<\/p>\n
“Win or loss, the death threats would come,” she tells triple j hack.<\/p>\n
“They’re going to find me, kill my family, kill me,” she says of the messages.<\/p>\n
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Aiava, 25, announced she was quitting tennis in an explosive social media post on Valentine’s Day, describing the sport as her “toxic boyfriend”.<\/p>\n
She last played at the Australian Open, where she was knocked out alongside Maddison Inglis in the first round of the women’s doubles.<\/p>\n
Like other professional athletes, Aiava says she was being targeted by members of the public who had placed bets on her match.<\/p>\n
“They were all gamblers,” she says.<\/p>\n
“Even if I did win, I would still get a lot of messages saying they had lost their home or something.<\/p>\n
“There was a period where, last year, I was literally scared to step on the court.”<\/p>\n
Loading Instagram content<\/p>\n
‘I don’t want to do this’<\/p>\n
Aiava admits she had been feeling as though she wanted to quit tennis for a while.<\/p>\n
“Two years ago I started to say, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore,'” she tells hack.<\/p>\n
She describes the response to her announcement that she was leaving the sport as “50-50”, saying that while she received messages of support and congratulations, she was also sent a lot of hate.<\/p>\n
“During my career I was mainly receiving negative comments,” Aiava tells triple j hack.<\/p>\n
“Comments about my skin colour or calling me a monkey \u2026 even the N word.<\/p>\n
“It’s a lot.”<\/p>\n
Aiava tells hack she did not receive much support from other Australian tennis players, and that she always felt she was an “outsider”.<\/p>\n
“A lot of Aussie tennis players love to advertise how amazing the camaraderie is, but, yeah, that’s not how I felt,” she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I didn’t have any friends in tennis anyway.”<\/p>\n
Grinding on tour<\/p>\n
Aiava’s life was dominated by tennis from childhood.<\/p>\n
She played in her first tournament at the age of seven, before turning pro at 15.<\/p>\n
“It was all just tennis, tennis, tennis,” she says.<\/p>\n
“I was just kind of thrown into this thing and made to deal with it.”<\/p>\n
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Destanee Aiava says she witnessed a culture of racism, misogyny and homophobia in tennis. (Supplied: Getty Images\/Matthew Stockman)<\/p>\n
She earned a career-high Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) ranking of 147.<\/p>\n
But she stresses the sport is not as glamorous as many fans might believe.<\/p>\n
“It wasn’t until I was in my maybe teens where I started to figure out that, you know, maybe I’m not actually enjoying this sport as much as I should be,” Aiava says.<\/p>\n
“We were grinding on the tour, just trying to get my ranking up.”<\/p>\n
Aiava said at one point she had less than $40 in her bank account and was often waiting weeks for prize money to come through to survive.<\/p>\n
“It’s really tough,” she explains.<\/p>\n
“I feel like that side of tennis isn’t really publicised as much and it definitely should be \u2014 I feel like the people who are watching and giving us so much criticism \u2026 would have more empathy and think twice before they comment or message us.”<\/p>\n
Racism ‘not getting better’Eating disorder resources:<\/p>\n
Aiava says she witnessed a culture of racism, misogyny and homophobia in tennis, with hostility to “anyone who didn’t fit the mould.”<\/p>\n
“I developed eating disorders \u2026 I starved myself,” she tells hack.<\/p>\n
“Most of the people playing this sport are a lot thinner \u2026 but Pacific Islanders are just built different.<\/p>\n
“Dealing with the messages, losing most of your matches \u2026 it’s all just like one thing after another piling up.<\/p>\n
“I guess I should have taken a break \u2026 but I just kind of tried to soldier through.”<\/p>\n
Loading Instagram content<\/p>\n
Aiava says that despite the decades that have passed since players like Serena Williams started to speak out against racism in tennis, it remains a big issue.<\/p>\n
“I don’t really think it has improved in any way, even though they advertise that they have more inclusivity,” she says.<\/p>\n
“Only seeing white players and no one else looking like me, it was really uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
“Especially when I was winning \u2026 it would automatically go to, ‘She looks like a man.'”<\/p>\n
Time to ‘do more’<\/p>\n
Aiava says while tennis federations have systems in place to combat negative comments on social media and promote inclusion, she feels more needs to be done.<\/p>\n
“I feel there needs to be some kind of consequence for the gamblers or people who send hate messages, death threats,” she says.<\/p>\n
“I actually got a lot of messages from parents who said that their kids are going through a very similar thing and they were super thankful and grateful.”<\/p>\n
She says she doesn’t believe telling players to get off social media is the answer.<\/p>\n
“That’s a cop-out,” she says.<\/p>\n
“Social media is an amazing way to connect with positive people, and it’s also work.”<\/p>\n
Responding to the haters![\"Australian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/7ea29b5d0d0d7c76fba2f6b57e6f82c7.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Destanee Aiava is looking forward to moving on with her life after announcing her retirement from tennis. (triple j hack)<\/p>\n
As for those who say Aiava lacks what it takes to keep playing tennis, she says that’s not it.<\/p>\n
“I definitely don’t agree,” she tells triple j hack.<\/p>\n
“I personally think my game was there.<\/p>\n
“It was just a matter of if I wanted to do it, and if I loved it enough, and I didn’t.”<\/p>\n
While she says she’s not sure when her last match will be this year, she is confident she won’t be returning to the sport.<\/p>\n
Instead, she says she is focused on studying interior design, and would love to do some reality TV at some point too.<\/p>\n
“I feel like I’ve already been scrutinised a lot,” she says.<\/p>\n
“So why not?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Destanee Aiava knew it was time to quit her professional tennis career when she began to feel scared…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":508475,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,255051,63,185522,22742,44317,191674,66053,51465,12460,255048,85,23371,747,255050,255049,3953,44318],"class_list":{"0":"post-508474","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-aussie-tennis-player","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-australian-tennis","12":"tag-body-image","13":"tag-dave-marchese","14":"tag-david-marchese","15":"tag-destanee-aiava","16":"tag-eating-disorders","17":"tag-hack","18":"tag-hack-on-triple-j","19":"tag-sports","20":"tag-sports-betting","21":"tag-tennis","22":"tag-tennis-betting","23":"tag-tennis-racism","24":"tag-triple-j","25":"tag-triple-j-hack"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508474","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=508474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}