Coco Gauff reflects as Swiatek hoodoo continues at Roland Garros

Coco Gauff bowed out of the French Open, losing today’s semi-final 6-2 6-4 to world No.1 Iga Swiatek. The Polish player continues to be Gauff’s nemesis - of the 12 games between these two, Swiatek has won 11. “Yeah, tough match for me, as always, she played a tough level and I think I made a lot of errors but overall I’m happy... well, I don’t know about happy but I’m proud of the run-in and I hope to go further next time,” the American told reporters afterwards.

Of those 11 defeats, five of them have been on clay courts - a surface on which Gauff has never managed to get the better of Swiatek. “I mean, I don’t know if it’s a big difference in our particular head-to-head - I’ve lost to her on clay and hard so... I don’t know if it plays much of a role but she is tougher on clay and I think she’s just more comfortable moving and the ball slows down so she’s able to dictate the play how she wants,” she offered by way of an explanation.

Coco Gauff admits errors in defeat to Swiatek

”I think it was the execution that I didn’t do well on,” Coco added. “I had a couple of break points early in the first set to break back and I made errors - a lot of short ball errors and I think, for the most part, I do think I had the right idea but I just made too many errors, especially on the shorter balls”.

One of the key moments of the game occurred in the second set when a Swiatek serve was incorrectly called out by a line judge as Gauff at her return, which flew out. Umpire, Aurélie Tourte, immediately overruled the line judge’s call - and deeming that it had not affected Gauff’s ability to hit her return. To Gauff’s astonishment, Tourte awarded the point to Swiatek.

The technology is there to improve tennis - Guaff

The decision clearly rattled the American, who was seen holding back the tears. “When you’re playing against her, every point matters - every point matters against anybody but especially against her so, I think it was just one of those moments but I overcame it - I obviously won that game, so, I usually don’t get too frustrated with decisions like that but I think it was just a combination of everything going on in the moment”.

Gauff was asked whether she thinks VR technology could help to clarify eliminate borderline calls which at the moment, seem to benefit one player to the detriment of another. “100 percent. You know, tennis is the only sport where, not only, we don’t have the VR system but a lot of times the decisions are made by one person. In other sports there’s usually multiple refs in making a decision. I know, US Open. Some of it last year I believe - I know we used it in our doubles at one point. So I definitely think at this point it’s almost ridiculous that we don’t have it,” she reasoned.

“Not also just speaking because that happened to me but I just think every sport has it and also there are so many decisions made and it sucks as a player to go back online and you see that you were completely right and it’s like, what does that give you in that moment and also in situations you can call for the supervisor but there’s not much they can do from that standpoint. So I definitely think as a sport we have to evolve and we have the technology. They’re showing it on TV so I don’t get why the player can’t see it”.