{"id":222520,"date":"2025-06-28T23:23:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-28T23:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/222520\/"},"modified":"2025-06-28T23:23:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-28T23:23:09","slug":"coco-gauff-aryna-sabalenka-moving-past-comments-criticism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/222520\/","title":{"rendered":"Coco Gauff, Aryna Sabalenka moving past comments, criticism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jun 28, 2025, 02:51 PM ET<\/p>\n<p>WIMBLEDON, England &#8212; It didn&#8217;t take long for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=3626\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Coco Gauff<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=3038\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Aryna Sabalenka<\/a> to patch up their relationship after this month&#8217;s French Open final.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>A day after dancing together on Wimbledon&#8217;s Centre Court in a TikTok video, the two tennis players faced more questions Saturday about the aftermath of Sabalenka&#8217;s comments right after the final, when she said her loss had more to do with her own mistakes than Gauff&#8217;s performance.<\/p>\n<p>The Belarusian later <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/tennis\/story\/_\/id\/45529538\/sabalenka-apologizes-gauff-comments-french-open-loss\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">wrote to apologize<\/a> to Gauff and said her comments were &#8220;unprofessional,&#8221; but not before she faced some major backlash from fans and pundits &#8212; especially in the United States.<\/p>\n<p><img class=\" lazyload lazyload\" data-image-container=\".inline-photo\" height=\"320\" width=\"570\"\/>A day after Coco Gauff and Aryna Sabalenka danced on Wimbledon&#8217;s Centre Court, Gauff said she&#8217;s &#8220;not the person that will fuel hate in the world&#8221; in response to questions about Sabalenka&#8217;s comments after her French Open loss to Gauff.\u00a0AP Photo\/Kin Cheung<\/p>\n<p>Gauff is trying to make sure the criticism stops.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not the person that will fuel hate in the world,&#8221; said Gauff, who opens her Wimbledon campaign against <a href=\"http:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=3142\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dayana Yastremska<\/a> on Tuesday. &#8220;I think people were taking it too far. &#8230; It was just really targeting and saying a lot of things that I felt were not nice. I didn&#8217;t want to fuel that more.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sabalenka, who faces <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=3390\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Carson Branstine<\/a> on No. 1 Court on Monday, said she hopes the TikTok video shows that all is well between the two.<\/p>\n<p>Editor&#8217;s Picks<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a name=\"&amp;lpos=story:editorspicks:inline:1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/tennis\/story\/_\/id\/45603875\/sinner-downplays-split-trainer-physio-ahead-wimbledon\" class=\"img-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/r1503702_1296x1296_1-1.jpg&#038;w=130&#038;h=130&#038;scale=crop&#038;location=center.jpeg\" width=\"65\" height=\"65\"\/><\/a><\/li>\n<li><a name=\"&amp;lpos=story:editorspicks:inline:2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/tennis\/story\/_\/id\/45604084\/wimbledon-best-chance-record-25th-slam\" class=\"img-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/r1499053_1296x1296_1-1.jpg&#038;w=130&#038;h=130&#038;scale=crop&#038;location=center.jpeg\" width=\"65\" height=\"65\"\/><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>1 Related<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are good, we are friends,&#8221; the three-time major winner said. &#8220;I hope the U.S. media can be easy on me right now.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sabalenka reiterated that she never meant to offend Gauff.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I was just completely upset with myself, and emotions got over me,&#8221; she said. &#8220;I just completely lost it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Gauff did acknowledge that she was initially tempted to hit back publicly at Sabalenka, who said the American &#8220;won the match not because she played incredible; just because I made all of those mistakes from &#8230; easy balls.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But after Sabalenka reached out to apologize, she was quick to bury any grudge.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I preach love, I preach light,&#8221; Gauff said. &#8220;I just want us to be kumbaya, live happily, hakuna matata, and be happy here.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Other players were also pleased to see the top two women&#8217;s players getting along again.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m happy to see that they turned the page about it,&#8221; said <a data-player-guid=\"f901758a-d8f2-442c-9cd3-44513fcbf31e\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/sports\/tennis\/players\/profile?playerId=2708\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Frances Tiafoe<\/a>, who is seeded 12th in the Wimbledon men&#8217;s bracket. &#8220;That&#8217;s the biggest thing, because they&#8217;re the best players in the world. So those relationships you kind of need.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Then the American added with a laugh: &#8220;But also it wouldn&#8217;t be too bad if they were also back-and-forth. That&#8217;d kind of be cool if they kind of didn&#8217;t like each other.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jun 28, 2025, 02:51 PM ET WIMBLEDON, England &#8212; It didn&#8217;t take long for Coco Gauff and Aryna&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222521,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[79,1068,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-222520","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114763569915653460","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}