LONDON (AP) — It didn’t take long for Coco Gauff and Aryna Sabalenka to patch up their relationship after this month’s French Open final.
Now as Wimbledon is about to start, Gauff is hoping everyone else can also forget what the top-ranked Sabalenka said in the wake of her loss to the American at Roland-Garros.
A day after dancing together on Wimbledon’s Centre Court in a TikTok video, the two tennis players faced more questions on Saturday about the aftermath of Sabalenka’s comments right after the final, when she said her loss had more to do with her own mistakes than Gauff’s performance.
The Belarusian later wrote to apologize to Gauff and said her comments were “unprofessional,” but not before she faced some major backlash from fans and pundits — especially in the United States.
Gauff is trying to make sure the criticism stops.
“I’m not the person that will fuel hate in the world,” said Gauff, who opens her Wimbledon campaign against Dayana Yastremska on Tuesday. “I think people were taking it too far. … It was just really targeting and saying a lot of things that I felt were not nice. I didn’t want to fuel that more.”
Sabalenka, who faces Carson Branstine on No. 1 Court on Monday, said she hopes the TikTok video shows that all is well between the two.
“We are good, we are friends,” the three-time major winner said. “I hope the U.S. media can be easy on me right now.”
Sabalenka reiterated that she never meant to offend Gauff.
“I was just completely upset with myself, and emotions got over me,” she said. “I just completely lost it.”
Gauff did acknowledge that she was initially tempted to hit back publicly at Sabalenka, who said the American “won the match not because she played incredible; just because I made all of those mistakes from … easy balls.”
Gauff also said she was slightly surprised that it took a while for Sabalenka to reach out to apologize. But once that happened, the American was quick to bury any grudge.
“I preach love, I preach light,” Gauff said. “I just want us to be Kumbaya, live happily, hakuna matata, and be happy here.”
Other players were also pleased to see the top two women’s players getting along again.
“I’m happy to see that they turned the page about it,” said Frances Tiafoe, who is seeded 12th in the Wimbeldon men’s bracket. “That’s the biggest thing, because they’re the best players in the world. So those relationships you kind of need.”
Then the American added with a laugh: “But also it wouldn’t be too bad if they were also back-and-forth. That’d kind of be cool if they kind of didn’t like each other.”
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AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis
