Georgian Tennis Player Deletes Facebook after Negative Comments
By Tea Mariamidze
Wednesday, May 30
Georgian tennis player Nikoloz Basilashvili declared he is annulling his official Facebook page due to negative comments from the population.
The sportsman explains that his official page on Facebook was created to keep the fans and population informed about his success or achievements. However, according to him, instead of support mainly negative comments were sent to him.
The goal of creating this page was to inform my fans and supporters about my sports career and to help tennis become more popular in Georgia. Regrettably, instead of supporting me, there was a lot of negative, Basilashvili writes.
He added that reading such comments and content affects him and he thinks it is better to delete the account.
I personally have a look at the page when I have time and reading these comments psychologically badly affected me. We made a decision and closed the page. Thanks to my true fans and success in ahead," Basilashvili writes.
On May 28, Basilashvili had a game with Gilles Simon, a French professional tennis player and lost 1-3.
At present Georgian sportsman is the 59th in world ranking, while Simon takes the 89th place.
Basilashvili reached a career high combined (singles and doubles) of World No. 59 on January 5, 2009. He ended his junior career with a 3522 record on singles and 1417 on doubles.
In 2015, he qualified for his first Grand Slam Tournament Roland Garros, losing in the first round to Thanasi Kokkinakis. Later in the same year he managed to qualify for Wimbledon, where he beat Facundo Bagnis and the 15th seed Feliciano Lopez, advancing to the third round of a major for the first time in his career. Later that year he managed to qualify for US Open too.
In February 2017 Basilashvili participated in the Sofia event, grabbing victories over Adrian Mannarino, 1st seed Dominic Thiem and 8th seed Martin Klizan, before losing to 3rd seed and eventual winner Grigor Dimitrov in the semifinals. Basilashvili continued his good form on Memphis Open, where he defeated 1st seed Ivo Karlovic and went to reach the final, but lost to Ryan Harrison in straight sets.
In June 2017, Basilashvili achieved a career-high singles ranking of 51. He reached three semifinals and one final throughout the year.
At the 2017 French Open, after defeating Gilles Simon and Viktor Troicki,Basilashvili lost to eventual champion Rafael Nadal in the third round, winning just one game across three sets.
Nikoloz has played two all-time greats Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, winning only six games.
