American No. 1 Taylor Fritz has become the latest high-profile player to say he would have no problem with one of his Tour comrades coming out as gay.
Currently, there are no openly LGBT players in men’s tennis and, historically, there have been few. Brian Vahaly is a former top 100 player but hasn’t fully made it there accept your sexuality to the point of moving away from sport. Another notable example is ten-time Grand Slam champion Bill Tilden, who struggled with his sexuality at a time when gay sex was illegal and not accepted by society. Tilden, who also won several major doubles and Davis Cup titles, was one of the world’s best players throughout the 1920s.
The lack of openly gay players in men’s tennis stands in stark contrast to the Women’s Tour, where Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King became among the world’s first openly LGBT athletes in the 1980s. More recently, there have been Amélie Mauresmo, Alison Van Uytvanck and Daria Kasarkina. This year, at Roland Garros, there were seven openly homosexual players.
Asked about the subject during a in-depth interview with website publication ClayWorld number 9 Fritz admits it is “strange” that there are no openly gay players on Tour, but says it would not be a problem.
“I don’t know if there are any gay tennis players in the top 100” Fritz told Clay. “Statistically speaking, there should be. … I think it’s strange, because I feel like a player would be accepted.
“Me and my friends, the other players on the tour would have no problem with it, it would be completely normal and I think people would accept it.”
Fritz suggested that players might not want to come forward publicly due to the surge in media interest it could generate. When British footballer Jake Daniels came out earlier this year, his story made headlines and sparked reactions from many sports figures around the world.
“I couldn’t tell you why (no one came out),” Fritz said.
“That would be big news and maybe people just don’t want to be in the spotlight, maybe they don’t want to be distracted by getting all the attention and stuff like that.”
This is not the first time that a major player has spoken out on the subject. Novak Djokovic has already declared that a player participating in the men’s tour would be a ‘courageous decision.” Speaking at the 2018 ATP Finals, the former world number one told reporters: “It is everyone’s right to have their sexual orientation as they wish.”
Most recently at the 2021 US Open, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Daniil Medvedev and Felix Auger-Aliassime all expressed their support to potentially have an LGBT peer on the Tour.
In July, the ATP announced a new partnership with the You Can Play project aimed at improving LGBT inclusion in sport following a survey carried out. One of the main findings is that there is widespread use of homophobic remarks on the Tour, but that these levels are consistent with those in other sports. This term refers to the use of homophobic expressions in general and not specifically to insult a person. 65 players participated in the survey, 95% of whom were aged 31 or younger.
According to a study published by the International Journal of Sociology of Sport, athletes develop more happiness and self-confidence in their sport after coming out. Their findings were based on the stories of 60 different male athletes, published on the LGBT Sports website. outsports.com. In the meantime, another study focused on North American high school athletes, found that 89% of LGBT tennis players reported receiving a positive response when reaching out to their teammates, with the remaining 11% reporting receiving a positive response.neutral‘ answer.
