The facts
Coco Gauff stated on social media that she received a large volume of racist comments and direct messages after an incident during her win over 16-year-old Sun Xinran at the China Open. Gauff, the world number four, had stopped play while serving at 4-5 in the first set due to a flickering light on the court. Her opponent initially believed she had hit a winner. Gauff explained her actions in a post on X, calling it an unfortunate situation out of her control and noting that Sun had understood and accepted her apology. Gauff later responded to a reply that contained racist language, writing, "You can dislike me or disagree about what happened without being racist." She added, The amount of racist comments/direct messages I've received in the last few hours is insane. Lastly, I'm not a cheater or a thief. The BBC Sport report notes that female tennis players have been subjected to significant online abuse, with a July report indicating over 12,000 abusive posts and messages in 2025. The WTA and World Tennis have called for collective action to address this issue.
Our take
Coco Gauff, a professional athlete who just won a goddamn tennis match, had to spend her post-victory hours explaining to a legion of racist keyboard warriors that a flickering light is not, in fact, a secret white supremacist signal. The world number four had the audacity to pause a serve because the court was turning into a goddamn strobe light, an act so heinous it apparently justifies flooding a teenager’s mentions with the kind of language usually scratched into truck stop bathroom stalls by people who think mayonnaise is spicy.
Her crime? Not being a ‘cheater or a thief,’ as she felt compelled to clarify to these absolute fucking morons. Imagine winning at the highest level of your sport and your immediate next task is to plead with anonymous dickheads that you are, in fact, a person deserving of basic human respect and not a character in their racist fan fiction. The sheer, pathetic volume of it - ‘a large volume’ is putting it mildly; it’s a backed-up sewer of hate - highlights that for these pricks, tennis is just a convenient backdrop for their main hobby: being gargantuan assholes.
And let’s not forget the breathtaking stupidity of the catalyst. A light flickered. That’s it. This international incident of butthurt revolves around a faulty bulb, which her opponent, the actual person involved, understood and accepted. But why let reality interfere when you can use a non-controversy as a springboard to vomit your prehistoric bigotry into a Black woman’s DMs? It’s the hallmark of a coward: too fucking stupid to understand the rules of the game, but somehow an expert in racial slurs.
The WTA’s calls for ‘collective action’ are nice, but what’s needed is for the platforms hosting this swill to grow a pair and for the fans who aren’t complete bastards to drown these cunts out. Until then, champions like Gauff are forced to play tennis and then, without a break, play whack-a-mole with an endless parade of racist shitgoblins who think a social media comment is a substitute for a personality. Fuck every single one of them.
