Gauff says the replayed Beijing point brought a wave of racist messages

Coco Gauff said on Tuesday that she had received an "insane" number of racist messages after her China Open win over Sun Xinran, and that disagreement about a replayed point did not require a racial slur.

The American, 22, ranked fourth and a two-time Grand Slam champion, beat the 16-year-old Chinese player 7-5, 6-1 on Monday to reach the fourth round. Late in the first set, with the game at a point that would have given Sun a winner, an advertising board along the court flickered. Gauff stopped and raised a hand. After a video review the umpire ordered the point replayed. Gauff won the replay, held for 5-5, and then took the set and the match.

Sun had looked set to win the point when play stopped. That is the fact the clips spread on. Gauff wrote on X, in reply to a post that used a racial slur, that people could dislike her or disagree about the point without being racist. She said the volume of racist comments and direct messages in the hours after the match was insane, and that she was not a cheater or a thief. In a second post she said she had apologised to Sun at the end of the match and that Sun had understood. She called the teenager an incredible talent.

Sun won the US Open junior title this year. She is 16, playing a home event, and was a set away from a top-five opponent in the third round of a WTA 1000. The replay did not decide the match by itself. Gauff still had to hold for 5-5 and then win six of the next eight games. The second set, 6-1, was not close. The argument online was about the stopped point, not about the rest of the score.

The rule Gauff pointed to is the one the umpire applied. A player can stop a point for a distraction, and the chair can order a replay after looking at the video. The advertising board is under the tournament's control, not the player's. Whether the flicker was enough to justify the stop is the judgment the chair made. Gauff's posts did not ask anyone to like that judgment. They asked for the abuse to be separated from it.

She is Black, and she named the messages as racist rather than as ordinary match criticism. The distinction is the one she wrote down: dislike and disagreement on one side, a slur on the other. She also rejected the charge that she had stolen the point. The chair, not the player, ordered the replay. That sequence is on the video.

The China Open has had a noisy week on the men's side as well. Daniil Medvedev was defaulted in the semi-final after a ball off his racket hit a spectator. That incident and Gauff's are not the same. One was a default for striking a fan. The other was a replayed point followed by a pile of messages directed at the winner. Both landed on the same event, on consecutive days, and both moved off the court and onto phones.

Gauff is still in the draw. The fourth round is the next match. Sun is out. The 16-year-old leaves Beijing with a loss to a top-five player and with a public apology from the opponent, which Gauff said she accepted. The messages Gauff described will not be in the official match report. The score will be: 7-5, 6-1, and a point in the first set that was played twice.

What she asked for on Tuesday morning was narrow. Argue the point if you want. Do not send the slur. The rest of the week will show whether that line holds as she plays on in the same city.