Coco Gauff Argues With Umpire, Suffers Loss In 2024 Paris Olympics

Coco Gauff was eliminated from the women’s singles bracket of the 2024 Paris Olympics this week, but she did not go out without a fight. The 20-year-old tennis sensation tearfully argued with an umpire over what she believed was a wrong call before eventually losing the matchup.

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Tuesday morning (July 30), the USA flag bearer faced off against Donna Vekic of Croatia. In the contended scenario, she served the ball to Vekic, who returned the serve near the baseline. The line judge called the ball out and Gauff did not keep it in play. However, the chair umpire , Jaume Campistol, believed Vekic’s return landed inside the boundaries, and awarded her the point, giving her a 4-2 lead in the process.

Gauff walked over to the official and was visibly emotional as she advocated on her behalf. “I never argue these calls. But he called it out before I hit the ball,” she told Campistol . “It’s not even a perception; it’s the rules.” Though Gauff was already losing, this officiating decision made her ability to come back even more of a mountain to climb.

The situation especially stung for Gauff because she experienced a similar scenario on the same court, Court Philippe Cartier, where she lost to Iga Swiatek in a semifinal matchup last month. This wasn’t her first time arguing with a chair umpire either, as she did so when she won her first 2023 US Open match. “There’s been multiple times this year where that’s happened to me — where I felt like I always have to be an advocate for myself on the court,” she said after her loss. “I felt that he called it before I hit, and I don’t think the ref disagreed. I think he just thought it didn’t affect my swing, which I felt like it did.”

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Gauff acknowledged that she was already trailing and that one decision wasn’t an entire determinant of the match’s result, but it didn’t help, either. “These points are big deals,” she said. “Usually afterward, they apologize. So it’s kind of frustrating. The ‘sorry’ doesn’t help you once the match is over. I can’t say I would have won the match if I would have won that point […] I’m not going to sit here and say one point affected the result today because I was already on the losing side of things.”

Her initial goal was to leave Paris with three medals, but that is no more. She still has a shot to win two, as she will compete in mixed doubles and women’s doubles.

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