The much-awaited draw for the US Open was finally released yesterday. With top players in action, the draw has handed some exciting match-ups for the fans. The World Number 1 and reigning Australian Open champion, Jannik Sinner, has been in much news after he was handed a tough draw. Despite being the World Number 1, Sinner has no respite as he has a big task at hand in New York. As a result, one fan called out the tournament authorities and the ATP and accused them of blatant bias and preferring players like Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic. This didn’t go down well with Andy Roddick, who slammed the fan on social media.

The fan took to X to point out how the US Open favored Alcaraz and Djokovic over Sinner and handed the latter a tough path at the tournament. He wrote, “Jannik Sinner gets the hardest draw in the US Open as the #1 seed… It’s not the first time the establishment wants Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic to succeed more. One thing I know for sure is that a healthy Sinner is better than both of these guys.”

The Italian star will open his campaign against Mackenzie McDonald at the US Open. Additionally, he has the likes of Stan Wawrinka and Stefanos Tsitsipas in his quarter of the draw, with a potential clash against Daniil Medvedev in the quarterfinals. Despite a tough path, the fan was confident about Sinner’s chances at the tournament. However, the tweet caught the attention of Roddick, who couldn’t help but slam the fan for accusing the tournament of a conspiracy theory. Roddick mentioned, “So anytime anything happens that any tennis fan doesn’t like now they just say establishment ……. It’s so dumb and gives leadership in tennis too much credit. They could never organize this well 🙂 Draws are random. This conspiracy shit at every turn is so boring at this point.”

This isn’t the first time Roddick has slammed fans for their stupid comments. Recently, it was found that Sinner failed a couple of doping tests at Indian Wells. Although he escaped punishment as he provided a valid reason for his positive tests, some fans called for Sinner to be stripped of his Australian Open win. Roddick lost his cool over this and came to the defense of Sinner.

Andy Roddick defended Jannik Sinner from his critics

Sinner’s sample was found to contain Clostebol, which is a banned substance. After his tests turned out positive, World No.1 appealed against this and said that he had come in contact with the substance through a spray applied by his physio. As a result, Sinner wasn’t held responsible for the contamination of his samples and he escaped with just stripping off his points and prize money at Indian Wells.

However, some fans felt that Sinner deserved a harsher punishment and wanted his Australian Open title that he won earlier this year to be stripped off. During his ‘Served’ podcast episode which was released on 22nd August, Roddick slammed the fans, saying, “There’s also a lot of noise online and people saying ‘take away his win in January, he beat my favourite player there’. Stop it. We get tested at every Grand Slam, so there’s no way he wasn’t clean at the Australian Open. The amount in his system is a billionth of a gram, which is 58,000 times smaller than a grain of salt – which is entirely consistent with the explanation.”

While Roddick has spoken in support of Sinner, the 23-year-old has been facing a lot of backlash otherwise. With so much going around, he would want to switch his focus back to the US Open, which starts next week. Can the Italian prove his critics wrong and win the US Open title? Let us know your views in the comments below.