World No. 13 Elina Svitolina took to social media following her straight-sets loss to Naomi Osaka at the National Bank Open Tuesday to decry the abusive and hateful messages she received in the aftermath of the match, attributing the vitriol to bettors.

"To all the bettors: I'm a mom before I'm an athlete," Svitolina wrote in a post onto a story on her Instagram account. "The way you talk to women - to mothers - is SHAMEFUL. If your moms saw your messages, they'd be disgusted..."

Svitolina included some of the abhorrent messages she received, which stemmed from various accounts in her direct messages on Instagram.

Unfortunately, it's not the first time this has happened in professional sports at large, but specifically, in tennis.

Just last year alone, 458 tennis players were pinpointed as the targets of direct abuse or threats and 15 such cases were deemed so grave that they were escalated to law enforcement agencies, according to a joint report released by the Women's Tennis Association and International Tennis Federation in June, via the New York Times.

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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Elina Svitolina Calls Out Bettors for Abusive Messages After National Bank Open Loss.

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