Coco Gauff suffered a huge upset at the Australian Open, losing to Elina Svitolina in the quarter-final 6-1, 6-2 in only 59 minutes. The World No. 3 made 26 unforced errors and only hit three clean winners in 15 games in the match, and later lashed out in what she thought was a private location, a ramp leading to the locker room: cameras caught her smashing her racket seven times with the floor.
Naturally, she was asked about her outburst in a press conference later. "Certain moments I feel like they don't need to broadcast. I tried to go somewhere where I thought there wasn't a camera because I don't necessarily like breaking rackets."
<social>https://x.com/tntsports/status/2016078126741151958</social>
Gauff said that the same thing happened to Aryna Sabalenka after a final at the US Open, and defended herself, saying that she promised to never break a racket since the 21-year-old did it at Roland Garros "because I don't feel like that's a good representation".
Iga Swiatek, who also suffered a big defeat against Elena Rybakina in quarter-finals, defended Gauff and asked for more privacy for the players: "The question is, are we tennis players? Or are we animals in the zoo? It would be nice to have some privacy", explaining that "in other sports, you have some technical things you wanna do. It would be nice to have some space you can do that without the whole world watching".