Claire Liu, one of last women standing at Victoria Park, reveals she deleted Instagram account after endless stream of abusive messages

One of the last women standing in an attritional Prudential Hong Kong Tennis Open has labelled the sport’s relentless calendar “brutal and gruelling”, as 2023 champion Leylah Fernandez on Wednesday added her name to a list of high-profile withdrawals from the tournament.

Claire Liu, who delivered a fine second-round performance on Victoria Park Tennis Stadium’s centre court to oust No 8 seed Katie Boulter, also disclosed that she recently deleted her Instagram account because of the hateful messages flooding her inbox “all the time, every day”.

On Tuesday, Great Britain’s Jodie Burrage received death threats after her Chennai Open first-round exit, while this week Maria Sakkari told the South China Morning Post that “very problematic” people routinely target her with messages “wishing death to my family”.

“[Being subjected to the abuse] is really hard, and I feel like it’s a lack of compassion and empathy,” Liu told the SCMP.

“We’re humans like everybody else. Would they say that to their daughters or sisters? They wouldn’t. But people think if they don’t know you, they can say what they want.”

A report released in July revealed that more than 12,000 abusive social media messages and posts were aimed at female tennis players last year.