CHENNAI — Britain’s Jodie Burrage has received death threats and abuse on social media after she was beaten in the first round of the Chennai Open on Tuesday — her first WTA Tour singles match in 16 months.
Burrage, 27, led India’s Vaishnavi Adkar 5–3 in the deciding set before losing four games in a row to go down 3–6, 6–3, 7–5 in two hours and 47 minutes. During the match she had been visibly shaking; her blood pressure and oxygen levels were checked and ice was rubbed on her arms and legs before she resumed, losing the final game to love.
Afterwards, Burrage published an Instagram story showing some of the abuse sent to her following the defeat, with her own message above it: “Nice welcome back to tour. I remember why I left.” Germany’s Eva Lys tagged the WTA from her own account and asked: “When will something be done?”
Sixteen Months Away
Burrage reached a career-high ranking of 85 in September 2023. She is now ranked 474th. Her last main-draw singles match on the WTA Tour before Tuesday was at Wimbledon in July 2025, where she lost in the first round to American Caty McNally — and said afterwards that she had had to stop herself looking at her phone because of online abuse. Last July she urged gambling companies and social media companies to do more to tackle the trolls.
The Sport’s Own Numbers
The abuse Burrage published is, by the sport’s own accounting, unremarkable in everything but its target’s willingness to show it. A report by the WTA and the International Tennis Federation found that 458 players were direct targets of abuse in 2024. Data from Signify Group’s threat-matrix service, which uses AI-led detection, counted more than 12,000 abusive posts and messages directed at female players in a single recent year, at a broadly similar level to the year before. The same research attributes 40 percent of all abuse — and 77 percent of the abuse sent directly to players’ personal accounts — to frustrated gamblers.
Burrage is not the only British player to have said this out loud. Katie Boulter has spoken about the level of abuse aimed at players and has said she and her family received death threats last year. The WTA’s player board has previously condemned the abuse as unacceptable and warned of its impact on players. On Tuesday night, the tour had not announced any new measure in response to Burrage’s post.
Burrage has previously called for social media accounts to be linked to verified ID so that abusers can be held to account, and her post on Tuesday renewed the question of what the platforms and the tour itself are prepared to do. The Chennai Open is a WTA 250 event, the third edition of the tournament and, as things stand, its last in the city before a planned move to Manila in 2027. Burrage’s ranking means her schedule runs through the lower tiers of the tour, where prize money is thin and players travel without the entourages of the top ten — and where, on the evidence of her phone on Tuesday night, the abuse arrives just the same.
The Burrage Abuse — In Short
Jodie Burrage, 27, lost her first WTA Tour singles match in 16 months at the Chennai Open on Tuesday, beaten 3–6, 6–3, 7–5 by Vaishnavi Adkar after leading 5–3 in the decider. She then published death threats and abuse sent to her on social media, writing: “Nice welcome back to tour. I remember why I left.” A WTA/ITF report found 458 players were direct targets of abuse in 2024, and monitoring counted more than 12,000 abusive posts and messages to female players in a year, much of it attributed to gamblers who lost money.
Sources: BBC Sport, November 3, 2026; Sky Sports, November 3, 2026; WTA and ITF online-abuse report (Signify Group data).
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