Alt-right d-bag Tennys Sandgren finally lost in the Australian Open quarterfinal
January 24, 2018The Australian Open has been bonkers. Everyone thought we were heading towards another Rafa Nadal-Roger Federer Men’s final, with only a few known quantities able to give Nadal and Federer some problems. Rafa retired injured in his quarterfinal match though, and Federer hasn’t had to play any of the guys who could have given him a headache, with David Goffin, Juan Martin del Potro, Novak Djokovic and Stan Wawrinka all crashing out in earlier rounds (all of those dudes were on Roger’s side of the draw). Instead, the last guys standing on Roger’s side of the draw were Hyeon Chung, a South Korean wunderkind, and Tennys Sandgren, a 26-year-old American who was barely top-100 in the world.
As Sandgren progressed through the tournament, people were like “yay, finally someone new in American men’s tennis!” And then they were like “let’s look at his social media to figure out what kind of guy he is.” That’s when all the problems started. Turns out, he’s a far-right Trump supporter who seems to have a lot of sympathies and loyalties to the Alt-Right, even having an online friendship with one of those neo-Nazis with Tiki torches who marched in Charlottesville last year. He also used derogatory language to describe transgender and LGBTQ people. Before his quarterfinal, he deleted many of his questionable tweets but of course people had screencapped them (go here to see). He also tweeted “Any day Serena loses is a good day” and this:
So when Sandgren’s quarterfinal started last night, this is what Serena tweeted:
Which is a perfect burn. Anyway, long story short, Tennys Sandgren lost his QF to the Korean wunderkind. In the post-match interview, Sandgren was asked about all of his Alt-Right tweets-and-deletes, and dude had the audacity to deliver this pre-written speech:
“You seek to put people in these little boxes so that you can order the world in your already assumed preconceived ideas. You strip away any individuality for the sake of demonising by way of the collective. With a handful of follows and some likes on Twitter, my fate has been sealed in your minds. To write an edgy story, to create sensationalist coverage, there are a few lengths you wouldn’t go to to mark me as the man you desperately want me to be.
“You would rather perpetuate propaganda machines instead of researching information from a host of angles and perspectives while being willing to learn, change, and grow. You dehumanise with pen and paper and turn neighbour against neighbour. In so doing, you may actually find you’re hastening the hell you wish to avoid, the hell we all wish to avoid. It is my firm belief that the highest value must be placed on the virtue of each individual, regardless of gender, race, religion or sexual orientation. It’s my job to continue on this journey with the goal of becoming the best me I can and to embody the love Christ has for me, for I answer to Him and Him alone.
“You strip away any individuality for the sake of demonising by way of the collective.” Easy, Ayn Rand. This is the stupidest argument for one’s alt-right douchebaggery: I WAS JUST BEING AN INDIVIDUAL! Yeah, an individual neo-Nazi sympathizer. To be clear… Tennys Sandgren has the right to believe whatever he wants to believe and vote however he wants to vote and tweet whatever he wants to tweet. It’s a free country. But of course journalists are going to ask him about it, because he was out there, retweeting Alt-Right conspiracies and being a homophobic douchebag. “Not ready for primetime” is what this is – and I kind of hope he crawls back under a rock after this.
Photos courtesy of Getty.