According to a rumor reported by The Tennis Podcast and by US journalist Jon Wertheim, Coco’s team would have pushed to play at 12 and disadvantage the Latvian who suffers from the heat and had rested much less
Coco Gauff flies to the semifinals beating, indeed overwhelming, in the first quarterfinal of the day the Latvian Aljona Ostapenko, who had beaten Iga Swiatek in the previous round, depriving her of the no.1. There was no match, a 6-0 6-2 that was far too clear for the nineteen-year-old American, and perhaps there is a more than logical explanation for this massacre, and that devil Brad Gilbert, who recently joined the team, could hit by Coco, with fantastic results. In the corridors of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center and filmed first by The Tennis Podcast and then by Jon Wertheim, a famous American journalist, there are rumors that Gauff’s team lobbied to let the 19-year-old darling of the house play in the daytime session of the program dell’Artur Ashe and not in the evening one (as initially foreseen), where instead Karolina Muchova and Sorana Cirstea will compete, a match for the American public much less interesting for the first evening.
THE CONTROVERSY
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Reason? It seems that Ostapenko hates the heat, and this afternoon in New York it was 38 degrees at noon (time of the match) with 70% humidity. Furthermore, the Latvian had gone to sleep at 3.30 in the night between Sunday and Monday after her match against Swiatek, therefore less rest. Gauff, on the other hand, is used to training in Florida in fierce sun conditions, and she has had no trouble adjusting. Real? False? Who knows, but this voice is there. The fact is that in just over an hour of play, Gauff took the semifinal, dominating the match far and wide. In fact, Ostapenko, either due to the heat or the tension (we’re certainly not talking about one of the most linear players on the whole circuit) shut down immediately. Victim of a Gilbert trick? It is not known, but few would be surprised, in case. After all, you don’t write a book called Winning Ugly, for nothing.
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