Amid French Open’s Stubbornness, Coco Gauff’s Coach Lauds USTA’s Breakthrough Move for Recreational Tennis

The French Open tournament is a unique one in many aspects. One is not using the ball-tracking technology in decision-making. The clay-court Grand Slam tournament relies on the judgment of the officials instead of using HawkEye. As a result, the decision-making is not 100% accurate and Coco Gauff was one of the victims of it recently. On the contrary, the USTA has created a wave of change by modifying an age-old rule. This invited massive appreciation from Gauff’s coach, Brad Gilbert.

Recently, it came to light that the USTA has completed a strategic investment initiative “USTA Ventures” that has invested in PlayReplay, a tennis technology company featuring an electronic line-calling system. It is set to increase access to accurate, user-friendly ELC for junior, adult, and recreational play which will minimize the errors from the line judges. Gilbert was elated to come across this and he took to Twitter to praise this new initiative, saying, “good news,” along with a thumbs-up emoji.

With this, the technology will come into play at the grassroot level and make the sport more fair. This will also come as a relief to Gauff, who herself has been a victim of incorrect calls at the French Open. One such incident occurred during her match against Iga Swiatek following which Gauff expressed her displeasure.

Coco Gauff slams ‘ridiculous’ tennis approach

During their semifinal match, Swiatek’s serve was called out by the line judge but it was immediately overturned by the chair umpire. However, Gauff failed to return the ball as it was called out initially and the point went against her. As a result, Gauff expressed her displeasure after the match.

Asked about the need of hawk eye at the French Open, she said, “100% I think it’s you know tennis is the only sport where not only we don’t have the VAR system but a lot of times the decisions are you know made by one person in other sports there’s usually multiple refs and and making a decision and I know US Open, um, I think brought some of it last year I believe and I know we used it in our doubles at one point, so yeah I definitely think that at this point it’s almost ridiculous that we don’t have it not also just speaking because that happened to me.”

It is high time the tournaments incorporate technology to minimize the incorrect calls which can have a huge bearing on the outcome of the matches. Do you feel hawk eye should be introduced at Roland Garros? Let us know your views in the comments below.