Morgan Riddle Has a Powerful Message For Haters in the Tennis Community

Tennis WAG Morgan Riddle has become an online sensation, but when she first gained attention from the tennis community alongside boyfriend Taylor Fritz, the response wasn’t exactly welcoming. 

Riddle, who has been called “the most famous woman in men’s tennis,” went on The Squeeze for some girl talk with Tay Lautner. Lautner has experience being the partner to another famous Taylor, so they had plenty in common. Riddle opened up about mental health and the frosty reception she received from her fellow tennis WAGs.

As a content creator, Riddle has always shared her life publicly. But as Tay put it, “Older tennis fans and players weren’t thrilled to have this cute blonde girl coming in and speaking up.”

“Sometimes I handle it really well,” Riddle says. “What people say, they’re not saying it about me. What you think of me is actually a reflection of you. I do fully believe in that.”

It helps that the criticism rarely stems from her actual behavior. “If I did something really genuinely terrible and problematic, or if I was a bully to someone, or if I said something offensive, I’d get it,” she said. “But nothing hateful that people say towards me actually is anything that I’ve necessarily done. A lot of it’s just like, ‘Ugh, stupid influencer.’” 

She dismisses much of the hate as “misogynist regurgitated bull****” that doesn’t merit serious consideration. “Of course my feelings get hurt, sometimes. But I’m able to really use it as motivation too, where I’m like, ‘The spite in me is gonna push me to do this even more, because you’re so mad about it.”

Riddle believes her polarizing status in the tennis community stems from breaking tradition. Historically, the  “wives and partners” in the tennis world “have been very private, heads down, in the box. They’re there to cheer on their partner. They didn’t have public personas.” 

Apparently, some of these more traditional tennis “WAGs” were less than pleased with Riddle’s content: “I don’t know if this is true,” she says, “But I have been told by people on the tennis tour that when I was first posting TikToks a couple years ago, there was a clique of older wives on the tour, and they would send my videos in their group chat and just, like, make fun of me. People wanted me, or I guess expected me to sit in the box, be relatively private, and not capitalize on my partner’s career.”

But Riddle has never been one to sit quietly. “I kinda came in guns blazing and was like, ‘Well, fuck that. And posted whatever I wanted to.”

Whether you’re a fan of Riddle’s content or not, those are words to live by. If you want to make noise, make noise! And to her haters, Riddle offers this response: “Thanks for the engagement. That’s about it. That’s all I have to say.”

For more celebrity interviews, check out The Squeeze with Taylor and Tay Lautner.