Canada’s Rebecca Marino tells the New York Times that one of the reasons she decided to take seven months off from tennis last year is because she was hurt by criticism on the internet. Marino reached a career high of No. 38 in July 2011. The 23 year-old has since seen her ranking drop to No. 418.

“Things were being written about me, and I’m quite sensitive about that,” Marino said. “And I’m quite nosy, so I’ll look it up. And then I’ll realize I shouldn’t have looked it up. With professional athletes, people put them on a pedestal sometimes, and they forget that they’re actually a person still.”

Marino added that what bothered her most were Twitter comments sent to her account by gamblers who had lost money betting on her matches.

“They’ll say, ‘You gave that match away, you cost me such-and-such amount of money, you should go burn in hell,’ or ‘You should go die,’” Marino said. “And oh, my gosh, that is really scary.”