Their following list is a sky full of stars, if you ask us.
‘Cause you’re a sky full of (tennis) stars!
Tennis fans found out this week that they can count the British rock band Coldplay as “one of us.” (Or their manager, at the very least.)
It all started when an X user noticed that that band’s carefully-curated “following” section on Instagram (despite having nearly 27 million people as its Instagram audience, the band only follows less than 100 accounts) had increased by more than a dozen in a short period of time last week. Upon further review, the additions to the list were some of tennis’ biggest names, past and present: from the Big 4 of Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray, to the current generation of greats like Carlos Alcaraz, Aryna Sabalenka and Jannik Sinner.
They, and others, as the post proceeded to rack up more than 11,000 likes, just had one question to ask: Why?
The band’s manager Phil Harvey, who first met the group in its early days in the late 1990s, had the answer.
“I really like tennis,” he humorously replied with a shrug from the band’s official X account.
But that wasn’t the only thing he noticed in the thread. As users wondered where Iga Swiatek—who once dubbed Coldplay frontman Chris Martin as a “dream plus-one”—was amongst the collection, Harvey quickly mashed the follow button on the world No. 1 to bring the haul to a baker’s dozen.
In the days since, Coco Gauff, Emma Raducanu, Casper Ruud and Serena Williams have been added to the fold.
It seemed as though the players themselves noticed their new follower, too.
Stefanos Tsitsipas delivered a subtle shoutout to his new addition by reposting a video he took from a 2022 Coldplay concert with a smiling face emoji.
With Coldplay’s “Music of the Spheres” world tour set to resume in Europe in a few weeks, will we see any of these players return the favor IRL?
