A tearful Coco Gauff complained of being “constantly cheated” as she was dumped from the Paris Olympic singles tennis tournament on Tuesday.
The world No. 2, chosen by teammates to carry the Team USA flag in Friday’s opening parade down the Seine, was trailing 7-6 3-2 to Croatia’s Donna Vekic in a thrillingly tight third-round contest.
Gauff was facing a huge break point at 30-40 and was going for a backhand return when a line judge called the ball out—causing her to slow down in her swing and miss the shot.
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The chair umpire overruled the line judge, awarding the point to Vekic, who went on to win 7-6 6-2.
The American immediately ran to the umpire’s chair to complain that she had been robbed of the point.
“For me, the call didn’t affect your shot,” the umpire replied.
“He called it out before I hit it. That’s why I went up on the ball,” Gauff retorted.
There followed a a five-minute argument in which Gauff insisted that the tournament supervisor come to the court and, according to USA Today, complained: “I feel like I’m getting cheated constantly in this game.”
It’s the 20-year-old’s first Olympic outing, after she was forced to drop out of the Tokyo Games at the last minute because she contracted COVID-19, and she had been seen as one of the favorites on the Roland-Garros clay.
But Vekic, world No. 22 and a losing semifinalist at Wimbledon, produced perhaps the best performance of her career, deploying fearsome ground strokes to fight her way back into the match after trailing 5-2 in the first set.
Gauff is still a contender in the women’s and mixed doubles.
