Coco Gauff, the world No. 4, beat 16-year-old Sun Xinran 7-5, 6-1 in the third round of the China Open in Beijing on Monday. Sun was playing her first WTA Tour event on a wild card in front of her home crowd. The match turned on one point. Sun led 5-4 in the first set and Gauff was serving at 15-15. During the rally, the LED advertising boards beside the court flickered. Gauff raised her hand, Sun kept playing and hit what looked like a winner, and the chair umpire went to video review. The review confirmed the flicker, so the umpire ordered the point replayed. Gauff won the replay, held serve, and took the set. Sun cried at the changeover and won one game the rest of the way. Within hours Gauff said she was getting an "insane" number of racist messages.

She followed the rule, and the umpire agreed

Gauff, Boris Becker and Martina Navratilova say the only real scandal here is the abuse.

The rule says a hindered player gets a replay. The WTA rulebook calls for a let when a player "is hindered by an event outside of her control" during play. Players can finish the point and ask for a video review afterward. Gauff said officials tell players exactly that before every match: "We are told before the matches we are allowed to continue to finish play."

Gauff says she stopped the moment she was sure. "I saw it flicker in the beginning of the point but was not sure if that is what I actually saw," she wrote. "When it flickered again I raised my hands before she hit her shot because this is when I was sure I saw the light flicker and it wasn't my mind doing tricks." She called the whole thing "an unfortunate situation" that was "out of my control," and said "calling me unfair is ridiculous when those are the rules."

People can disagree with her without being racist, Gauff says. "You can dislike me or disagree about what happened without being racist," Gauff posted. "The amount of racist comments/dms I've received in the last few hours is insane. Lastly, I'm not a cheater or a thief." Gauff is Black. The WTA's abuse-monitoring system logged more than 12,000 abusive posts aimed at players last year. Six-time major champion Boris Becker told her to ignore "the ignorant stupid people" and "keep walking straight with your head held up high." Martina Navratilova, the 18-time major champion, told her to "ignore these ridiculous people who only see the worst possibilities."

She apologized to Sun after the match, and Sun understood. "I apologized for the situation at the end of the match and she completely understood," Gauff wrote. "I did not like to see her so emotional as I've been there." In her press conference she said Sun is "a little bit more mature than I was at 16."

She played on until she was losing, then asked for the do-over

A Substack writer, a Sina columnist and Reddit commenters say she followed the rule but not the spirit of it.

She stopped only once she was losing the point. Corvath Draemir, who writes the Tennis and Thoughts newsletter, counted three flickers, not two. Gauff "played through the first flicker. She played through the second. She then stopped after the third," Draemir wrote. Draemir says Gauff "used a legitimate rule after the third to escape a point she had chosen to continue playing." Reddit critics argued she should have stopped the point the moment the boards bothered her, and one wrote, "Gauff should apologize asap."

Getting the rule right doesn't make the replay sporting. Draemir says the umpire did the job by confirming the hindrance was real. Draemir writes that whether the replay was sporting is "a judgment for the sporting community." Sportsmanship, in that newsletter's words, means "accepting the legitimate consequences of competition, even when the rules provide a possible escape."

Chinese readers split over whether the replay was fair even if it was legal. A Sina News columnist writing as 佳很温鑫 called Gauff's post-match applause for Sun "false decency." The applause "looked gentlemanly, but in fact tore open a gap in the court's decency," the columnist wrote, adding that fans want "genuine fairness and sincerity" over polished gestures. A Sina sports account summed up the split. One side said the ruling was procedurally correct and the apology professional. The other said the timing undermined fair competition even if it was legal. When reporters asked Sun about the match, she talked about her own nerves. "I thought I had a decent opportunity to win the first set, but my emotions were affected in the second set," she said.

The rule makes this happen, so change the rule

Novak Djokovic and Aryna Sabalenka want players forced to stop the instant they're hindered. Two columnists blame the rule rather than Gauff.

Djokovic faced the same thing a day earlier. In Sunday's men's quarterfinal, top seed Alexander Zverev lost a point and said the LED signage had gone off. Umpire Adel Nour reviewed it and gave him a replay. Novak Djokovic, who won the match to stay unbeaten in Beijing, told the umpire: "This has been one of the most stupid changes of rules I've ever seen in my life. If there's a hindrance he stops immediately. He can lose a 30-shot rally then say okay I'm going to challenge now."

Players get a free option if they can finish the point first. World No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka said the same thing in March. That was after 2021 US Open champion Daniil Medvedev won a hindrance review at Indian Wells, one he asked for only after the point was over. "If you really got bothered, then you should stop immediately and ask for the video review," she said. She asked: "If he would have won the point, he wouldn't probably ask for the video review, right?" Jack Beatnik of Last Word on Sports calls it a "free option": players "can apparently continue competing while preserving the possibility of arguing afterward that they should not have been competing at all."

Make players stop first, then ask for the review. Beatnik wants the rule rewritten so a hindered player must "stop immediately. Stop, request the review, and accept the consequence." José Morón of the Spanish site Punto de Break says the current rule "puts the player in a difficult position" and "opens up complaints about whether she is using it to her advantage."

Where This Lands

Gauff and her defenders say she did what the rulebook and the pre-match briefing told her to do, and that the only thing worth condemning is the racist messages she's getting. Her critics say she followed the rule but had already lost the point before she asked for it back, and that a 16-year-old on her tour debut paid for it. Sabalenka has argued since March that the real problem is a rule that lets players finish the point and then challenge. Djokovic said the same on Sunday. Beijing has now produced two of these replays in two days. Gauff plays No. 13 seed Elise Mertens in the round of 16 on Wednesday afternoon, Beijing time. Sabalenka, Djokovic and Beatnik all want the same fix: a hindered player stops first, then asks for the review.

Sources