Ahead of this year’s Australian Open men’s final, ‘Nina’ faced a dilemma most women who are fans of men’s sport can relate to.
A self-proclaimed ‘genuine’ tennis lover, Nina was keen to witness the world’s top two ranked men take to the court.
But the world number two — Alexander “Sascha” Zverev — has had various allegations of domestic violence levied against him by two former partners, Olya Sharypova and Brenda Patea.
Patea, who is also the mother of Zverev’s child, made her allegations in 2023, with the two parties reaching an out-of-court settlement.
Zverev denied the allegations and the settlement had no admission of guilt or any criminal finding against him.
Sharypova made her accusations in an interview with journalist Ben Rothenberg in Racquet magazine in 2020, and chose not to pursue the claims via the criminal justice system.
Zverev has denied the allegations throughout, calling them “unfounded” and “simply not true” when they first surfaced over five years ago.
“From the beginning I have maintained my innocence and denied the baseless allegations made against me,” Zverev said again in 2023.
Brenda Patea’s 2023 allegations against Zverev ended in an out of court settlement between the pair. (Getty Images: Jens Kalaene/picture alliance)
As Nina explained to journalist Ben Rothernberg, the question that plagued her was: “‘How do I show that I do not support Sascha?'”
In the end, Nina settled on attending, but chose to use her voice on behalf of a group so often silenced.
After Zverev lost in straight sets to Jannik Sinner, and was due to take the microphone, Nina yelled the same phrase at the top of her voice three times:
“Australia believes Olya and Brenda!”
It was a courageous move.
“This was just one person who believed in something, and had to do something that scared them because they believed in it,” James Rogers said on The Body Serve podcast.
Craig Tiley, CEO of Tennis Australia, however, saw it differently.
“That incident ruined [the final] for everyone,” he told 3AW.
“If someone’s going to behave like that, they can stay away. And if they come and do that, we’ll remove them.”
Nina was removed, with police escorting her from the Melbourne Park premises.
“And rightfully so, because it’s a breach of the positive enjoyment for the rest of the fans,” Tiley added.
Tennis may need to introduce a domestic violence allegation policy
The incident raises several uncomfortable questions for the sport, including how tennis can show that it takes seriously the problem of violence against women while silencing protests in its name.
As it stands, the ATP does not have a policy on domestic violence allegations, which means players can take to the court despite being accused of serious crimes.
It’s an issue Andy Murray raised four years ago, when he called on the Tour to take a “proactive” approach to the “extremely serious” allegations levelled at Zverev.
“That is something we as a sport should be looking into, so the ATP know what to do in that situation, rather than having to think and react to it,” he said in 2020.
In the absence of such a policy, the sport can be accused of turning a blind eye to an issue that should be at the forefront of the Australian Open organisers’ minds.
Commentator and former world number four Jelena Dokic was a consistent presence at this year’s tournament, and has been increasingly vocal about her experience of abuse at the hands of her father.
Dokic, who has openly admitted to struggling with depression and suicidal ideation, has repeatedly argued that telling her story saved her life.
Jelena Dokic has been increasingly vocal about her experiences of abuse. (Reuters: Tim Wimborne)
In this context, the sport needs to find a way to enable conversations about violence against women, even when they relate to allegations and not convictions.
It may also need to suspend players who are facing serious allegations of domestic violence, as is the case in other sports.
The NRL, for example, introduced a ‘no-fault stand down’ policy in 2019 which sees players automatically stood down if they face serious charges that warrant a maximum jail sentence of 11 years or more.
At the time, the Australian Rugby League Commission chairman Peter Beatie said the policy was not about being popular, but “sending a clear message that the game does not tolerate violence against women or children.”
It was this seeming double-standard that drove Nina’s protest:
“Sascha has been able to go about his business and be celebrated and cheered on the world stages,” she told Ben Rothenberg.
“Part of me wondered whether that’s because the majority of people truly don’t care about victims’ voices and well-being.”
More women than ever murdered in Australia
Tennis, like any other sport, does not exist in a vacuum, and Australia’s violence against women problem is not going away.
2024 was officially one of Australia’s worst years of gendered violence on record, with Destroy the Joint reporting that 78 women were murdered by men.
That number is an increase from 64 murdered women in 2023, and 56 in 2022.
In 75 per cent of cases recorded between 2012 and 2023, the victim knew her alleged killer.
Not only is the problem not going away, it’s getting worse.
So is gender inequality, which is an established driver of violence against women.
Until last year, Australia was in freefall on the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index — which measures key benchmarks of gender parity — slipping from 18th to 43rd in the world.
Protest is a powerful mechanism through which to give voice to the marginalised.
It’s a well-established fact that the criminal justice system rarely leads to just outcomes for women who are victims of domestic violence.
And in the case of sport, far too many alleged or convicted perpetrators remain in the system, their reputations apparently ‘untouched’.
Nina’s cry illuminated those double standards.
Yet in sport, and in the media, domestic violence is one of the hardest issues to talk about.
In saying their names — Olya and Brenda — Nina has cleverly provided an opportunity for journalists to remind the public of who these women are.
So often, we are reluctant to name alleged perpetrators of violence because of the ever present threat of legal action for defamation.
By thrusting their names into the news cycle, it is incumbent on us to revisit the accusations of violence by Zverev, something so often overlooked in favour of ‘on-court’ prowess, as if sport could be separated from politics.
Without leadership from the sport, individuals like Nina are being left to sound the alarm on what it’s like to choose between the game you love and the idea that you are implicated in a culture that overlooks violence against women.
Women know this dilemma too well. It’s something they grapple with every time they engage with men’s sport.
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