'Draining': Coco Gauff, a disputed point and two days of racist abuse

BEIJING: Coco Gauff said the last two days in Beijing had been 'draining', and she said it knowing the cameras were rolling. On Monday the world No. 4 beat China's 16-year-old Sun Xinran 7-5, 6-1 in the third round of the China Open, a routine result made ugly by what happened around it. Late in the first set, serving at 4-5, Gauff stopped a rally because the electronic advertising boards at the side of the court were flickering. The chair umpire ordered the point replayed. She held serve, took the set, and apologised to Sun afterwards.

Online, the apology was not the story. Gauff later wrote that the volume of racist comments and direct messages she received in a few hours was 'insane', and that disagreement about a tennis point did not require racism. She added that she is not a cheater or a thief. Sun, a wild-card entry making her WTA Tour debut days after winning the US Open junior title, accepted the apology in full, according to Gauff's account of their conversation.

On Wednesday the defending Beijing champion lost 6-3, 6-3 to Belgium's Elise Mertens in the last 16, committing 34 unforced errors, and told her team courtside that she had no energy. It would be too simple to draw a straight line from the abuse to the errors; professional athletes lose matches for many reasons, and Mertens played the bigger points better. But Gauff herself connected the week to her condition, and her judgement of her own body deserves to be taken seriously. She said she simply switches off her phone and moves on, because there is nothing else she can do.

That sentence is the indictment. A 22-year-old two-time Grand Slam champion, one of the most recognisable athletes in the world, describes her only available defence against racial abuse as turning off the device through which modern sport is sold. The tours, the tournaments and the platforms that profit from her visibility have policies, statements and reporting buttons. What they have not produced, on the evidence of this week, is a week in which a Black champion can contest a disputed point, explain herself politely, and be criticised only for tennis. Criticism of the call was legitimate. Some of what followed was not criticism at all.