A woman who protested against Alexander Zverev during the Australian Open final has become the target of online abuse after her actions at Rod Laver Arena. The woman heckled Zverev as he prepared to give his post-match interview, shouting, “Australia believes Olya and Brenda!”—a reference to domestic abuse allegations made by Zverev’s former partners, Olya Sharypova and Brenda Patea, which the German tennis player has consistently denied.
Zverev did not respond to the heckle during the ceremony, but in a press conference later, he remarked: “Good for her. I think she was the only one in the stadium who believed anything.”
Following the incident, images of the woman were circulated on social media, sparking a wave of cruel trolling and body-shaming comments. One person commented, “She should look to exercise instead of shouting idiotic remarks at Sascha,” while another described her protest as typical of “wokists” who “systematically see evil in men.”
Despite the backlash, the woman explained her reasons for protesting in an interview with tennis journalist Ben Rothenberg. She said, “I was sitting on his player’s box end of the court. All night, people were cheering, ‘Sascha! Sascha! Sascha!’ It was gross. He may try to bully people—ATP, journos, whomever—into quashing the story. But I wanted him to know that tennis fans know and we care about those women. And we f***ing believe them.”
She also shared that as an Eastern European woman who grew up in an abusive environment, she felt compelled to make her voice heard.
In 2023, an ATP investigation found insufficient evidence to support Sharypova’s claims, and separate allegations from Patea were settled out of court. While the case was closed, it was not a ruling on Zverev’s guilt or innocence.
