Coco Gauff says she suffered racial abuse on social media following an incident in her win over 16-year-old Sun Xinran at the China Open.<\/p>\n
The American had been serving at 4-5 in the first set her Chinese opponent thought she had hit a winner.<\/p>\n
However, Gauff raised her hand to halt play because of a flickering light in the side panels surrounding the court.<\/p>\n
Gauff won the next three points to hold for 5-5 before she closed out the set, and then dropped just one game in the remainder of the contest as she claimed a 7-5 6-1 victory to reach the last 16 in Beijing.<\/p>\n
The world number four gave a lengthy explanation of why she stopped the point in a post on X and said it was “an unfortunate situation” but “out of my control”, adding that Sun had understood and accepted her apology.<\/p>\n
Gauff then responded to a reply to her original post which included racist language.<\/p>\n
“You can dislike me or disagree about what happened without being racist,” Gauff wrote.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
Gauff is far from the first player in the women’s game to suffer social media abuse.<\/p>\n