Trevisan’s grunts queried in semi-final loss to Gauff at Roland-Garros

This year’s Roland-Garros women’s semifinals didn’t match last year’s drama — when eventual champion Barbora Krejcikova saved a match point against Maria Sakkari. 

Much of the chatter, on the match details that is, in Coco Gauff’s 6-3, 6-1 win over Martina Trevisan centred on the latter’s grunts. 

Early in the first set, Gauff queried the chair umpire Marijana Veljovic about Trevisan’s audible exertions when striking the ball. 

“Too loud or no?” the American asked, politely. 

Veljovic replied: “I’m gonna talk to her when I have a chance.”

“I normally don’t care but when I’m hitting it, she is still screaming,” said Gauff. 

Veljovic did have a word with Trevisan later in the match, with the 59th-ranked Italian — who saw her 10-match winning streak come to an end — left puzzled after the semifinal. 

It’s so weird because, I mean, nobody never tell me that

Martina Trevisan

“It’s so weird because, I mean, nobody never tell me that,” she said. 

“…I’m sure that I, at that moment, I didn’t need to change something, because I always play like this, and nobody tell me anything.” 

She said she wasn’t grunting to put off her opponent. 

“If you see my matches during this week but during my whole (time) here, I’m playing like this. I play like this. So it’s not something for Coco, no,” said Trevisan. “I think also today I was very lower than usually.”

Gauff said it was the extended nature of Trevisan’s grunt that preoccupied her. 

“While she was grunting, I was still hitting the ball,” said Gauff. “It wasn’t so much the volume of it. It was more so the length of the grunt.

“I just wasn’t used to (it), and I asked the ref. First I asked, ‘Is that allowed?’ Because I didn’t know the rules regarding if she was allowed to grunt, and she told me ‘no,’ she was going to talk to her later about it.

It wasn’t the volume. It was just more so, like I remember hitting the backhand and I could still hear her grunting

Coco Gauff

“It wasn’t the volume. It was just more so, like I remember hitting the backhand and I could still hear her grunting.”

But there didn’t seem to be any issues when the match ended. A warm, extended exchange followed at the net.   

“No, I love Martina,” said Gauff. “When we’re on the court, there’s stuff like that you’re going to talk about. But as you all saw at the end, we hugged each other. So, yeah, I have no problem with her.”

Gauff, 18, and seeded 18th, reached her first Grand Slam final, where she will face world No. 1 Iga Swiatek, who is carrying a 34-match winning streak.  

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