Coco Gauff Calls Out 'Insane' Racist Abuse After Replayed Point at the China Open

One flickering advertising board turned a straight-sets win into a night of racist abuse. Coco Gauff beat Sun Xinran 7-5, 6-1 in the China Open third round on Monday, but the result was overtaken within hours by the messages Gauff says flooded her accounts, which she called “insane” in a post on X early on Tuesday, Reuters reports. The trigger was a single replayed point late in the first set.

What happened on the disputed point?

Gauff was serving to stay in the set at 4-5 when the rally turned. As Sun, the 16-year-old home favourite, appeared about to put away a winner, Gauff raised her hand and stopped playing, saying an electronic advertising board beside the court had flickered during the rally, Reuters and USA Today report.

After a discussion and a video review, the chair umpire ordered the point replayed. Gauff won the replay, then the next two points to hold for 5-5, and dropped only one more game in the match. Sun, a wild card on her WTA Tour debut, was left distraught at the end of her first senior tournament, CNN reports.

Was Gauff entitled to stop play?

Yes, and the distinction matters for everything that followed. Players are allowed to request video reviews of select judgment calls, including claims that a distraction interfered with play, Reuters reports. Gauff explained that the boards had flickered from the start of the point but that she was not sure at first what she had actually seen, USA Today reports.

The replay decision belonged to the umpire, not to Gauff. Beijing has now seen the review system cut both ways in the same week: it produced the replay here, and it sat behind Djokovic calling the rule ‘stupid’ after Alexander Zverev’s point was replayed earlier in the tournament. A let in tennis works on the same principle: an outside interference wipes the point, whoever it inconvenienced.

What exactly did Gauff say about the abuse?

She replied to a post that contained a racial slur, and she did not soften it. Gauff wrote that people can dislike her or disagree about what happened without being racist, that the amount of racist comments and direct messages she had received in a few hours was “insane”, and, pointedly, “I’m not a cheater or a thief”, Reuters, CNN and USA Today all report.

She also separated the opponent from the crowd noise. Gauff wrote that Sun is an incredible talent, that she apologised for the situation at the net and Sun completely understood, and that she did not like seeing the teenager so emotional because she has been in that position herself, Reuters reports.

How big is the abuse problem the WTA is measuring?

Bigger every year, on the tour’s own numbers. A study by the WTA and World Tennis counted more than 12,000 abusive posts and messages directed at players on social media in 2025, up from about 8,000 a year earlier, Reuters reports. The WTA has responded with an AI-powered system that monitors thousands of players and officials.

That context is the value of Gauff’s post beyond one bad night. The system can flag volume; it cannot explain to a home crowd why a 16-year-old’s dream point was replayed, or stop a disputed ruling becoming a racial pile-on before the player has left the stadium. This tournament has already lost its top two women’s seeds on consecutive days and seen Daniil Medvedev disqualified for hitting a ball into the crowd; Gauff’s win is the third Beijing story in a week where the tennis was not the headline.

What did the WTA say when it responded? (Update, October 7)

It backed her, in the strongest available words. Update, October 7: a WTA spokesperson told AFP the tour was appalled by the racial abuse directed at Gauff, that it is in contact with her to offer its full support, and that there is no place for racism, discrimination or abuse in tennis, SuperSport reports. The tour said it is seeking action against the abusive content.

That answers the institutional half of the story. The monitoring system the WTA built can count the abuse; the statement is the tour saying, on the record, that what followed the replayed point was over its line. What ‘seeking action’ produces, account by account, is the part that remains untested.

How did the week end for Gauff on court? (Update, October 7)

Badly, and she connected the two halves herself. Gauff lost her fourth-round match on Wednesday to Elise Mertens, 6-3, 6-3, a player she had beaten in all five of their previous meetings, Reuters reports. She made 34 unforced errors and eight double faults in 78 minutes, and at 4-1 down in the second set she told her team she had no energy and felt she might pass out.

Asked about the previous 36 hours, she said they had been draining, that she just turns her phone off and moves on, and that there is nothing you can do, Reuters reports. Hours later, the Wuhan Open announced she had withdrawn from next week’s tournament, where she is the defending champion, citing fatigue. In a statement shared by the tournament, she said that after a long year her body needs time to rest and recover, SuperSport reports.

What happens next?

Rest, by her own prescription. Gauff, 22 and ranked fourth in the world, is one of the players the monitoring system was built to protect, and she sits high on any list of the greatest female tennis players of the modern era debates for her age. Her argument on Tuesday was narrower than any of that: disagree with the call all you want, but the disagreement does not need a slur in it. The tour has now answered her as publicly as she answered the abuse; the open item is whether its promised action against the abusive content ever becomes visible, and when a rested Gauff returns.

What did the United Nations say? (Update, October 10)

The story has now left tennis. The United Nations Human Rights office condemned the abuse in a post on X on Saturday, saying the racist messages targeting Gauff are appalling and illustrate that Black female athletes are specifically targeted for vitriol and racial abuse, Reuters reports. It added that there is no place in sport for racial or sexist slurs and abuse, and that players, coaches and sports bodies need to stand up for those facing such attacks while fans push back against them.

That is a different level of response from the WTA statement of October 7. The tour spoke as the sport’s governing body protecting one of its players; the UN office spoke to the pattern the WTA’s own study measures, the more than 12,000 abusive posts and messages counted in 2025, and named the group it says is singled out. Reuters reports it has contacted the WTA and the Beijing tournament organisers for comment on the UN statement. The pattern the UN named is not confined to the professional game or to social media: this week the University of Maryland suspended its entire club tennis team after a tournament document sent to Howard and other visiting teams contained KKK imagery in an altered state flag, a case aimed at student players before a match rather than at a star during one. Gauff herself is resting after withdrawing from Wuhan, so the next development in this story is institutional rather than personal: whether the tour’s promised action against the abusive content, or any organiser response, ever becomes visible.

Update, October 16: Wuhan reached its semi-finals without its defending champion, and the week produced a record in her absence: Iga Swiatek beat Ann Li on Friday to complete the set of semi-finals at all 10 WTA 1000 tournaments, with Wuhan the last venue she had been missing.

What did Brad Gilbert say the WTA still owes Gauff? (Update, October 16)

A public statement that she broke no rule. Update, October 16: Brad Gilbert, who coached Gauff through 2024, said on the Big T podcast that he was very disappointed the WTA never announced that what Gauff did was within the rules, Yardbarker reports. His complaint is narrower than the tour’s October 7 statement. The WTA condemned the abuse and offered Gauff support, but it never publicly settled the sporting question underneath it: a player may stop a point when a flickering board affects play, and the umpire, not Gauff, ordered the replay. Gilbert said the tour never backed the player on that point and never said it would look into the board issue itself.

Andrea Petkovic, on the same podcast, said she wanted a statement and some protection, and that Gauff acted within all the rights and rules on the tour, Sportskeeda reports. That distinction is the update’s value. The UN statement of October 10 named the pattern of abuse. Gilbert and Petkovic are naming a missing sentence from the tour itself, the one that would have told the audience abusing her that the ruling was correct before the abuse started. Gauff is still resting after the Wuhan withdrawal, so the open item is again institutional: whether the WTA ever issues the rule clarification her former coach is asking for.