When Coco Gauff was asked to describe her match against Laura Seigmond, the 19 year old tennis player paused for a beat before answering: “Slow.” After being posted to TikTok by ESPN, Gauff’s US Open game against Siegmund went viral, with many online frustrated by the umpire’s seemingly biased calls.
Gauff played a contentious match in the 2023 US open against 35-year-old German opponent Laura Seigmond. The point of conflict was the athlete’s serves: tennis has a rule that players have to serve the ball within 25 seconds or receive a time violation. Siegmund slowly bounced the ball before serving, repeatedly using up all of her time but avoiding a time violation. At one point, when Gauff served the ball, Seigmond threw her hands up, saying she wasn’t ready, and Gauff had to re-serve.
Gauff pointed this out to the referee, saying: “She’s never ready when I’m serving. She went over the clock, like, four times. You gave her time violation once. How is this fair?”
The umpire said that the player was serving unusually fast, and Gauff argued that the umpire was taking too long to call the point. This cut into Gauff’s allotted time to serve, which made it seem like she was serving abnormally fast.
The ESPN commentators were on her side, with one broadcaster complimenting her: “Well said.”
Siegemund also attempted to sit between matches, an illegal move, and Gauff once again pointed this out to the umpire. After repeated missed calls, the crowd began to turn on the umpire, calling out “time” as Seigmund went over the clock. Seigmund did receive two time violations later in the game, once for going over the 25 second limit, and once for failing to be prepared for Gauff’s serve. Gauff went on to win the match.
At the press conference afterwards, Seigmond descended into tears as she recounted the crowd’s treatment of her: “They treated me like I was a cheater. They treated me like I was a bad person.”
Though it makes sense that a US audience would support a US player on US turf, many online find it refreshing that a woman of color is being praised for standing up for herself, instead of being leveled by harsh criticism. The fact that the audience actively supported Gauff’s position against the umpire is a switch up from spectators in a game that has been less than welcoming to Black women in the past.
As for Gauff, she says that she has no regrets for how she handled the situation: “I would still say everything that I said in that moment again.”
