Playing Iga Swiatek is hard enough without other challenges working against you.
Coco Gauff tore into umpire Aurélie Tourte during her French Open semifinal loss on Friday to Swiatek, the world’s No. 1 player who is at her best on the clay of Roland Garros.
Early in the second set, Gauff was furious after Tourte overruled an out call on a Swiatek serve and awarded the point to the Polish star.
Gauff had hit the serve out, but felt that the linesperson’s initial call impacted her swing.
This was the exchange, according to The Tennis Letter:
Gauff: “I didn’t even finish my follow through. He called it before I hit it. Can you ask him?”
Tourte: “We cannot ask him.”
Gauff: “They’re booing because you’re wrong… I have the right to finish my swing.”
Tourte: “To me it didn’t affect the shot.”
Gauff: “This is the second time this has happened. It’s a grand slam semifinal. Know the rules of the game.”
An emotional Gauff appeared to be tearing up after returning to the baseline, but was able to recover and break Swiatek for a 3-1 lead in the set after dropping the opener 6-2.
However, Swiatek, who has won three of the past four French Opens, won five of the final six games to win the match and advance to the finals against the winner of the Jasmine Paolini-Mirra Andreeva match.
Swiatek improved to 11-1 overall against No. 3 seed Gauff, the reigning U.S. Open champion, and has defeated her at the clay-court Grand Slam tournament three years in a row, including in the 2022 final and last year’s quarterfinals.
Putting aside a three-set, second-round victory over four-time major champion Naomi Osaka, when she was forced to save a match point, Swiatek has ceded a total of merely 17 games in her other five matches.
Displaying her usual brand of powerful-but-clean groundstrokes, Swiatek needed only 10 winners to advance on Thursday, in part because she made only 14 unforced errors — while Gauff finished with 39.
It did not take long for Swiatek to assert herself on a sunny afternoon in Court Philippe Chatrier, where several spectators waved red and white flags of her native Poland — even drawing an admonition from Tourte in the second set.
When Gauff missed the mark early, she really missed it. One return went off her racket frame. Another flew 10 feet long. The opening game ended when Gauff wildly hit a swinging volley that landed way out, too, handing over a break.
Swiatek went up by a double break at 4-1 when Gauff netted a backhand, then slapped her thigh and smacked her racket against a bag on her sideline bench. There were other examples of negative body language from Gauff: a bowed head here, slumped shoulders there.
It’s not as though Gauff did not have some chances to make more of a match of this.
In each of Swiatek’s first two service games, she faced a break point. But each time, Gauff failed to convert.
— With AP