PARIS — The scene seemed familiar to Coco Gauff. A refereeing decision she was sure was wrong. A chair umpire who wouldn’t listen to her. Tears streaming down her cheeks. And, most disappointing of all, a loss, this time at the Paris Olympics.
The venue was the same: Philippe Chatrier Court was where the reigning US Open champion was eliminated in the third round of the Summer Games by Croatia’s Donna Vekic 7-6 (7), 6-2 on Tuesday. It is also the main venue used each year for the French Open, where Gauff found herself in a nearly identical dispute over a call in her semifinal loss to eventual champion Iga Swiatek last month.
“This year it’s happened to me a number of times, where I felt like I always had to defend my interests on the court,” Gauff said afterwards, renewing her call for the use of video review in tennis, as in many other professional sports.
“I felt like he blew the whistle before I hit, and I don’t think the umpire disagreed,” she said. “I think he just thought it didn’t affect my swing, which I think it did.”
Gauff is one of the biggest stars of the 2024 Paris Games, a 20-year-old from Florida who was seeded No. 2 at the Olympics in singles and was the U.S. women’s flag bearer at the opening ceremony on Friday.
But it was Vekic who received the most support in the stands early in the match, with chants of “Don-na! Don-na!” ringing out. When Vekic began her comeback from a 4-1 deficit, she responded to the applause by waving her arms above her head for more, and the crowd responded. In the next game, Gauff hit a backhand winner and raised her hand, waving her fingers, to ask the people in the stands to support her, which they responded to, prompting a wry smile from Vekic.
By the time the contentious call was made, with two plays remaining in the game, Gauff was well behind.
She hit a serve and Vekic’s return landed near the baseline. A line judge initially ruled Vekic’s shot out of play; Gauff did not keep the ball in play. Chair umpire Jaume Campistol ruled that Vekic’s shot landed in-court and awarded her the point, allowing her to break serve and take a 4-2 lead.
Gauff approached the referee to speak and the game was delayed for several minutes.
“I never dispute these decisions. But he announced it before I hit the ball,” Gauff told Campistol. “It’s not even a perception, it’s the rules.”
She easily won her first two singles matches, dropping just five games in total. But her first Olympic singles tournament (she’s still in women’s doubles and mixed doubles) ended with a performance that wasn’t her best on the hottest day of the Summer Games so far, with temperatures topping 32 degrees Celsius.
“Those points are very important. Usually, afterward, they apologize. So it’s quite frustrating. ‘Sorry’ doesn’t help you after the match is over,” Gauff said. “I can’t say I would have won the match if I had won that point.”
Even before the umpire’s decision issues, Gauff had failed to maintain a strong start against Vekic, who was a semi-finalist at Wimbledon this month.
The American led 4-1 and was one point away from taking a 5-1 lead and serving for the first set. But she failed to seal the deal, then squandered a pair of set points at 6-4 in the ensuing tiebreak. Vekic battled back to the end of that set, then held her level in the second.
A measure of Vekic’s superiority this afternoon: she finished with 33 winners to just nine for Gauff.
“I’m not going to sit here and say that one point affected the outcome today,” Gauff acknowledged, “because I was already on the losing side.”
The most memorable moment of the match was that argument in the second set. Gauff even alluded to that Swiatek loss when talking to Campistol and a supervisor who joined the conversation on court Tuesday.
“It always happens to me here at Roland Garros. Every time,” Gauff said, holding a tennis ball in one hand and her racket in the other as she pleaded her case. “This is the fourth or fifth time this has happened to me this year.”
Vekic, who qualified for the quarter-finals, did not get involved, staying at her end of the court and playing with her ropes.
“It’s a very delicate situation. Personally, I think the referee made a good decision, because the decision came quite late,” Vekic said when asked what happened. “But I will have to watch the game again. It’s difficult to know exactly what happened at the time.”
When Gauff gave up and returned to the court to resume play, the fans booed loudly – anger directed at the referee.
The first point of the next game went to Gauff, and the spectators cheered her fervently.
But about 10 minutes later, the game was over.
Gauff was scheduled to return to the court with American teammate Taylor Fritz for a first-round mixed doubles match later Tuesday. She also competes in women’s doubles with Jessica Pegula at these Olympics.
Over the weekend, Gauff said she hoped to come away with three medals, one in each of her events in Paris. But that won’t happen now.
“I want,” Gauff said Tuesday, “to come home with something.”
___
AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/paris-olympics-2024
