BEIJING \u2014 Coco Gauff said she had \u201cno energy\u201d in her loss to Elise Mertens at the China Open on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The 6-3, 6-3 defeat to a player Gauff had beaten in all five of their previous matchups came days after she had received what she described as an \u201cinsane\u201d amount of racist comments on social media following a controversial point in the preceding round.<\/p>\n
Later Wednesday, the Wuhan Open announced that Gauff withdrew from the upcoming tournament. It quoted Gauff, the defending champion, as saying \u201cAfter a long year, my body needs some time to rest and recover.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Monday\u2019s match against home player Sun Xinran, the fourth-ranked Gauff stopped a rally after electronic advertising boards lining the court flickered during a point late in the first set.<\/p>\n
Sun appeared about to win the point when Gauff stopped playing. The chair umpire then ordered the point to be replayed.<\/p>\n
\u201cHey everyone, you can dislike me or disagree about what happened without being racist,\u201d Gauff, who is Black, said in a reply on X. \u201cThe amount of racist comments\/dms I\u2019ve received in the last few hours is insane. Lastly, I\u2018m not a cheater or a thief.\u201d<\/p>\n
Against the 19th-ranked Mertens, Gauff dropped her serve four times.
Gauff committed 34 unforced errors to Mertens\u2019 11 and had eight double faults to her opponent\u2019s two. Four of Gauff\u2019s double faults came when she was broken in the final game of the first set.<\/p>\n
Trailing 4-1 in the second set, Gauff told her team that she had \u201cno energy\u201d and felt as though she would pass out.<\/p>\n
\u201cI kind of felt like she was dropping a bit in energy,\u201d Mertens said. \u201cI tried to push myself. But I know she\u2019s a great competitor. It\u2019s never done against her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mertens reached her first quarterfinal at a WTA 1000 event \u2014 the level just below the Grand Slams \u2014 in five years.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s an incredible player, of course. I knew it was going to be a very tough match,\u201d Mertens said. \u201cBut I had motivation. My coach\/boyfriend, it\u2019s his birthday tomorrow. So this win is dedicated to him and all the work we do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mertens improved to 3-3 against top-10 opponents this year. She also beat defending champion Jasmine Paolini at the Italian Open and current No. 1 Elena Rybakina in the third round of Wimbledon, where she reached the quarterfinal.<\/p>\n
Also Wednesday, the USTA announced that Gauff will compete when the U.S. hosts Hungary in a Billie Jean King Cup playoff in her hometown of Delray Beach, Florida, Nov. 21-22.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Iga Swiatek broke Iva Jovic\u2019s serve twice in the last four games to beat the 18-year-old American 6-1, 6-3.<\/p>\n
Swiatek, a six-time Grand Slam champion who has struggled at times this year, will next play Mertens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BEIJING \u2014 Coco Gauff said she had \u201cno energy\u201d in her loss to Elise Mertens at the China…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":874610,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[99],"class_list":["post-874609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=874609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/874610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}