Fiona Crawley robbed of $125k

American college star Fiona Crawley robbed of $125k US Open prizemoney

 American college star Fiona Crawley robbed of $125k in US Open prize money A "horrible" rule forced a rising tennis star in the United States to return all of her prize money.

A US tennis star needed to do without a huge number of dollars to keep her NCAA qualification.

As you can figure, she is troubled about it.

According to the New York Post, Fiona Crawley, a senior at the University of North Carolina, made her Grand Slam debut at the U.S. Open on Tuesday after progressing through the qualifying rounds.

Regardless of losing her first-round match to Russia's Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Crawley brought in $81,000 in prize cash for making the competition.

However, that left the 21-year-old Tar Heel with a decision: Take the cash and lose NCAA qualification or surrender her rewards - she picked the last option.

According to The News & Observer, Crawley stated, "I would never take the money and never risk my eligibility." However, he added, "I worked my butt off this week and it seems unreal that there are football and basketball players making millions in NIL deals, and I can’t take the money that I worked so hard for."

"It's so terrible," she proceeded. " I'm sorry, but I can't even talk about it. It's along these lines, so terrible."

Student-athletes can receive up to $10,000 in prize money under NCAA amateurism rules, but only if it comes from the event sponsor.

Over that $10,000 limit, the cash "may not surpass real and vital costs for each resulting occasion in the schedule year," as per NCAA rules.

Indeed, even after the harsh completion, Crawley said simply coming to the USTA Billie Jean Ruler Public Tennis Community was a blessing from heaven.

Crawley stated in an interview following his qualification for the U.S. Open, "I’ve dreamt about this moment for so long... since I was 5 years old and old enough to know what the U.S. Open was."

"After the match, when I got done, I certainly was in shock. I've had a constantly to handle it, I'm still most certainly in shock.

"I feel like I won't really digest it until I'm about to serve or return the first point of my first [main-draw] match," the participant stated.