Brazilian tennis player Joao Lucas Reis Da Silva has made history with a single Instagram post.

Reis Da Silva recently took to Instagram to share a sweet tribute celebrating his partner, Gui Sampaio Ricardo’s birthday.

While on first glance it may seem like any regular birthday tribute, the post makes Reis Da Silva the first gay male tennis player to be open about his sexuality while still active on the tennis circuit.

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In the year 2024, it may seem strange that we’re only now seeing this piece of history marked, but former tennis players such as Brian Vahaly – who opened up about his sexuality following his retirement – have explained why it may be so.

“Tennis is perceived as that country club sport, a highly competitive individual sport played across every country of the world. There are a lot of reasons not to come out as a gay man,” he told The Telegraph in 2018 after sharing his sexual orientation on a 2017 podcast episode.

“Outside of the States and Europe, there are a lot of countries not accepting of gay men. It’s not a team sport; there are not teammates on whom you can rely – you practice with your competitors.”

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He added that because of “a lot of homophobic locker room comments made in jest”, the professional tennis circuit never felt like a safe space for him to be open about his sexuality. 

As Vahaly pointed out, tennis is a sport that sees its players travel the world to compete in tournaments from an amateur level all the way up to the pros.

With homosexuality still criminalised in 64 countries with penalties including life in prison and even the death penalty in 12 of those countries, it’s no wonder players in the spotlight have often kept their sexuality to themselves.

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It’s a battle that’s been publicly fought by tennis stars for close to a century now, likely even longer.

In 1917, Danish tennis player Leif Rovsing – who competed in both the singles and doubles competitions at the 1912 Summer Olympics – was banned from the sport for “presumed homosexuality.”

“Mr. Rovsing’s morality is of such a nature that it stands in open conflict with the task of all healthy sports, to promote bodily and spiritual health,” the Danish tennis authorities said of his ban at the time.

Rovsing was said to have never attempted to keep his sexuality a secret, and spent the rest of his life unapologetically defending the LGBTQIA+ community’s right to play professional sport.

Despite dedicating his life to campaign for the acceptance of homosexuality in sport, Rovsing’s ban was never revoked.

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Unable to ever return to professional tennis, Rovsing was instead forced to commission, design and decorate the Dansk Tennis Club in Copenhagen where he could continue to enjoy his sport in what is now considered one of the most decadent places to play tennis in the world.

After being outed in 1981, Billie Jean King paved the way for gay female tennis players when she ignored her lawyers’ advice to deny claims she was a lesbian.

“I said, ‘I’m going to do it. I don’t care. This is important to me to tell the truth’,” King told NBC News in 2017.

“The one thing my mother always said, ‘To thine own self be true’.”

Over the years several female tennis players have been open about their sexuality, but that doesn’t mean they’ve had an easy go of it either. 

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Top Russian tennis player Daria Kasatinka shared her sexuality in a 2022 YouTube interview, saying, “Living in peace with yourself is the only thing that matters, and f–k everyone else.”

In the following years, she has shared that her sexuality is one of the reasons she can no longer live in her home country, adding that she has no plans to return and openly criticising Russia’s conservative political environment.

“It’s unsafe for me now, with the regime we have,” she said in 2023.

“As a gay person who opposes the war, it’s not possible to go back… But I don’t regret it even 1 per cent.”

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