Gauff reaches quarters, jokes about forgetting rackets

PARIS (AP):

COCO GAUFF might have earned her fifth consecutive trip to the French Open quarter-finals with a straight-set victory yesterday, but she still is catching flak because she forgot to bring her rackets to a match earlier in the tournament.

The number-two-seeded Gauff, who won the 2023 US Open and was the runner-up in Paris in 2022, has been engaging in a bit of back-and-forth with another American and Roland-Garros quarter-finalist, Frances Tiafoe, over the equipment blunder.

Tiafoe teasingly called the 21-year-old Gauff ‘Mrs Mature’. Gauff’s retort: “I feel like maybe just playing tennis, it forces you to grow up faster for some people. Maybe not him.”

It was Tiafoe who first made that very mistake back in March, showing up for a match at the tournament in Indian Wells, California, without his rackets. He got plenty of ribbing on social media and from other players — including Gauff.

So when Gauff went to Court Philippe-Chatrier for her first-round match last week and opened her bag, only to realise there weren’t any rackets inside, the 27-year-old Tiafoe was only too happy to call her out.

“She was full out shaking her whole bag like it was an empty cookie jar on Chatrier. I was like, ‘What are you doing?’ ... I’m going to keep ripping her for a long time. I’ve never seen someone (ranked number two) in the world have zero things in her bag. That was incredible,” said Tiafoe, who will play in the quarter-finals today.

“That kind of thing is so big because it just makes everyone (realise) we’re all human. People make mistakes, whether it’s the team or her or whatever,” he said, then added with a smile: “That was a funny moment, especially (because) she tries to be Mrs Mature. That was great. I’m happy it happened to her. Hopefully, it happens again.”

Gauff acknowledged she couldn’t really offer much of a retort.

“I literally told him: ‘From you, I expected it. From you, it’s OK, but the fact that it happened to me ... .’ Because I feel like I’m a professional person, and usually I am someone — if anybody knows me — I’m someone that can find the comeback real quick. Even if I’m wrong, I’m one of those people that will still defend myself. I don’t like losing arguments,” Gauff said yesterday after beating number-20 Ekaterina Alexandrova 6-0, 7-5 in the fourth round.