It's time we stopped blocking out the Russian and Belarusian flags at sporting events

It's a bit childish don't you think? First it started out with Wimbledon actually forbidding Russians and Belarusians from participating and this kind of threw the tennis world into an uproar because the global point system was upset by many professionals not having a chance at one of the biggest point-gathering tennis events of the year. It was just that, but the people who got higher levels of points at Wimbledon that they probably would have otherwise saw their global rankings get thrown out of order and the global ranking system was no longer reflective of who actually was the best in the world. Combine this with some tournament's have a vaccine requirement in place and now the global ranking system didn't even represent who was the best in the world at all. ATP responded by negating all of the points at Wimbledon but admitted that there wasn't anything they could do about the American tournaments for some reason.

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No matter how you feel about the conflict in the Ukraine you can certainly understand that the players themselves don't have anything to do with that right? Also, we know where they are from and by not putting their flags next to their names is not only disrespectful but it is also very childish. Carefully omitting their nationality from any commentary is also a but silly. We know where they are from and their country's politics have nothing to do with their ability at tennis. Also, the groupthink that decides what military conflicts are ok and which ones aren't are really kind of maddening. I don't recall the US flag being whited out when they were at war occupying multiple middle-eastern countries.

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When Sabalenka won the women's championship in the Australian open, they wouldn't put the name of her country on the trophy. What are we really hoping to accomplish here?

They banned the flags from being at the events and there was a problem outside where Djokovic's father was just standing near someone who had a shirt that supports Russia's war effort and from that point forward he either wasn't allowed to attend any more events or decided not go to on his own accord. I don't know what the truth is there but just because he is in a photo with someone with some Russia gear on he is not permitted to watch his son win the Australian open?

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Did he know what the guy was doing or was he just walking around? There doesn't seem to be a great deal of clarity on this and he was already guilty in the eyes of the organizers without any real investigating being done. The news reports said that there were "calls for Srdjan (Novak's father) to be banned from the Australian Open." Ok, well who was making these calls?

I just think the whole nation-hating and pretending as though certain countries don't exist is really stupid. To me it seems like something a middle-school kid would do to a yearbook by scratching out someone's face in the book because they don't get along in the hallway.

Politics do not belong in sport and I feel this way about all politics, not just the ones I don't agree with. Sport should be off-limits to all of this in my mind and the tennis world needs to cut it out. I don't think they will though because they have already gone this far and it is probably too late to turn back now.