{"id":185624,"date":"2025-09-27T15:59:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T15:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/185624\/"},"modified":"2025-09-27T15:59:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T15:59:07","slug":"lorenzo-musetti-apologizes-for-outburst-at-coughing-chinese-fans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/185624\/","title":{"rendered":"Lorenzo Musetti apologizes for outburst at coughing Chinese fans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sep 27, 2025, 08:53 AM ET<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=3764\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Lorenzo Musetti<\/a> has become the latest tennis star to apologize to Chinese fans.<\/p>\n<p>Musetti was annoyed by coughing in the crowd during his round-of-32 win Friday against <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=8885\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard<\/a> at the China Open in Beijing. He was seen mimicking a person clearing their throat after a point and said in Italian: &#8220;They cough every three seconds.&#8221; Local media also accused him of mouthing &#8220;damn Chinese.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I would like to sincerely apologize for what I said in frustration yesterday during my match,&#8221; Musetti <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/DPGQP-KjA__\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">wrote on Instagram<\/a>. &#8220;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>Editor&#8217;s Picks<a name=\"&amp;lpos=story:editorspicks:inline:1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/tennis\/story\/_\/id\/46290306\/taylor-townsend-apologizes-comments-chinese-food\" class=\"img-link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/r1538161_1296x1296_1-1.jpg&#038;w=130&#038;h=130&#038;scale=crop&#038;location=center.jpeg\" width=\"65\" height=\"65\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I realize that the way I expressed myself was wrong and inappropriate, and it hurt many Chinese fans&#8217; feelings.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Musetti&#8217;s outburst prompted a flurry of outrage on social media, with people commenting on one of his previous Instagram posts to accuse him of being a racist, along with insults and slurs against the Italian culture.<\/p>\n<p>American tennis star <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=2114\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Taylor Townsend<\/a> apologized Sept. 17 for making disparaging comments about Chinese food before the United States played Kazakhstan at the Billie Jean King Cup Finals in Shenzhen, China.<\/p>\n<p>Townsend had posted videos of local dishes including bullfrogs and turtles and joked she would need to &#8220;talk to HR&#8221; about the quality of the food. She took to Instagram again to apologize after facing a backlash online and said &#8220;everyone has been so kind and so gracious.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Associated Press contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sep 27, 2025, 08:53 AM ET Lorenzo Musetti has become the latest tennis star to apologize to Chinese&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-185624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}