World No. 2 Coco Gauff rolled through her first two Olympic singles matches, but lost Tuesday after landing in an oddly familiar clash with an umpire. Gauff's opponent Donna Vekic, the world No. 21 and a semifinalist at Wimbledon two weeks ago, led by a set and had a break point at 2-3 in the second set when things got hairy.
Gauff hit a serve and Vekic's shanked return landed deep, just inside the baseline. Then two things happened, in an order that turned out to be critical: Gauff hit that ball into the net, and a linesperson incorrectly called Vekic's return out. The linesperson immediately issued a correction to that call, acknowledging that Vekic's return had in fact landed in. The issue then became whether the sound of that shouted call had hindered any player's ability to hit the ball. If it had, the point would be replayed. The umpire decided that it had not affected play—that Gauff independently hit it into the net, and the call came after—and awarded Vekic the point. (It's very close, but it does appear that Gauff had already made contact with the ball before the call rang out.)
Gauff went to the chair to argue that the call caused her to pull up on her swing instead of following through normally, but the umpire stuck to his initial ruling, and in the absence of video review, there was nowhere else the conversation could go. “It always happens to me at French Opens, every time,” a tearful Gauff said. “I always have to advocate for myself on this court, all the time.”
Gauff asked to speak to the supervisor, who came on the court to discuss the call. In her conversation with the officials, she referred to a very similar incident when she was on this court for her Roland-Garros semifinal in June, as well as another incident in Dubai in February. (She also mentioned Serena Williams, possibly an allusion to her infamous 2018 U.S. Open final where she was issued a point and game penalty for violations like illegal coaching and racquet abuse.) "This is the third time it happened. It happened to me in Dubai, it happened to me here, and both times I was right. I have never argued calls and you know this, but this isn’t fair. This isn’t fair. I feel like I’m getting cheated on constantly in this game," Gauff told the umpire and supervisor. But nothing changed, and it took almost five minutes for play to resume.
The crowd booed the officials. Strangely, they booed Vekic too, even between her first and second serves, and she fell to 0-40 in her next service game, later saying that it was difficult to concentrate. But Vekic eventually held serve and broke once more to win 7-6(7), 6-2 and move onto the quarterfinals. “It’s a very tricky situation. I personally thought the umpire made a good decision, because the call came quite late,” Vekic said in press afterward. “But I’ll have to rewatch it. It’s tough to know exactly in the moment.”
Gauff, who is at her first Olympics and was a flag bearer for the U.S., is a strong doubles player who will continue her Games in both the mixed and women's draws. “I’m not going to sit here and say one point affected the result today,” Gauff said after the match, “because I was already on the losing side of things.” Even so, instituting across-the-board video review for fringe moments like hindrance calls, which are infrequent and wouldn't affect overall pace of play, doesn't seem like too much to ask of the sport's governing bodies.
