Aryna Sabalenka has come under fire after her post-match comments appeared to suggest Coco Gauff won her first French Open title primarily due to her poor performance in Saturday\u2019s final.<\/p>\n
A crestfallen Sabalenka lost her second Grand Slam final of 2025 after she was well beaten by an impressive Gauff, who held her nerve as she secured a 6-7(5) 6-2 6-4 victory.<\/p>\n
She took Gauff out of her comfort zone throughout, took a less risky approach in windy conditions and was by far the better player as she lifted the trophy in Paris and claimed her second Grand Slam title.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka agreed that Gauff was a deserving champion, but she went to suggest the primary reason for the American winning was her poor performance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n She also suggested Gauff was lucky to get balls into court when she wasn\u2019t making a clean connection on her strings.<\/p>\n The 7 US women to win the French Open title: Gauff joins Serena, Evert in legendary group<\/a><\/p>\n The 7 women to lose consecutive Australian and French Open finals: Aryna Sabalenka joins unwanted group<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI mean, honestly, sometimes it felt like she was hitting the ball from the frame,\u201d said Sabalenka.<\/p>\n \u201cSomehow, magically, the ball lands in the court, and you\u2019re kind of on the back foot.<\/p>\n \u201cIt felt like a joke, honestly, like somebody from above was just staying there laughing, like, \u2018let\u2019s see if you can handle this\u2019.<\/p>\n \u201cI was just making unforced errors. I think she won the match not because she played incredible. Just because I made all of those mistakes, kind of like from easy balls.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was really honestly the worst tennis I\u2019ve played in the last, I don\u2019t know, in the last I don\u2019t know how many months.<\/p>\n \u201cConditions were terrible, and she simply was better in these conditions than me. I think it was the worst final I ever played.<\/p>\n \u201cIn these tough conditions, I couldn\u2019t really mix it up. It was tricky. It was tricky in these conditions to do stuff that I was doing, for example, in Madrid that I know I have to do against her to get the win.<\/p>\n \u201cAlso, I think I was overemotional. I think today I didn\u2019t really handle myself quite well mentally, I would say. So basically that\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n Sabalenka\u2019s frustrations were understandable and they are the mark of a champion who simply cannot comprehend a defeat when she expected to live up to her status as the world No 1 by wining a first Grand Slam title.<\/p>\n Yet the media who attended her press conference in Paris were surprised that the jovial, joking Sabalenka was replaced with a player who decided to belittle the success of the new French Open champion amid her own annoyance.<\/p>\n Social media users have been quick to criticise Sabalenka\u2019s lack of grace, with the joy created by Gauff\u2019s worthy victory acknowledged by tennis lovers around the world.<\/p>\n Former US President Barack Obama was among those who congratulated Gauff on his social media channels, with former British No 1 Tim Henman suggesting this win could give the young American the confidence she needs to kick on and achieve more Grand Slam successes.<\/p>\n \u201cSabalenka really did start off in top gear. She was hitting the ball so aggressively and not making unforced errors,\u201d reflected Henman on TNT Sports.<\/p>\n \u201cBut you\u2019ve got to find a way to get the job done. The resilience from Gauff was so impressive even though she lost the first set and started to turn things around in the second.<\/p>\n \u201cCoco was more accepting of the conditions and therefore wasn\u2019t trying to play perfect tennis, whereas Sabalenka was playing so aggressively all the time and needed to vary it a bit.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a journey and we\u2019ve been following the journey of Coco Gauff. She was 15 when she played qualifying at Wimbledon and six years on, she\u2019s got her second Grand Slam title. She\u2019s able to deal with all the pressure and expectation away from the court and handles the adversity on the court.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is still so much room for her improvement, the second serve, the forehand. if she can make a few more technical changes, then she will be even tougher to beat.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Sabalenka may well reflect that her unfortunate comments were not befitting of a world No 1 after a compelling Grand Slam final, but this was Gauff\u2019s moment and any suggestion that she was fortunate to get over the winning line should be banished.<\/p>\n READ NEXT: Coco Gauff\u2019s key to French Open triumph revealed as Chris Evert delivers verdict<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The post Aryna Sabalenka under-fire after contentious comments \u2018belittling\u2019 Coco Gauff\u2019s French Open win<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Aryna Sabalenka has come under fire after her post-match comments appeared to suggest Coco Gauff won her first French Open title primarily due to her poor performance in Saturday\u2019s final. A crestfallen Sabalenka lost her second Grand Slam final of 2025 after she was well beaten by an impressive Gauff, who held her nerve as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}More Tennis News<\/h3>\n