Coco Gauff recently disclosed how she deals with messages from critics after suffering tough losses. Her compatriot and WTA Tour rival Madison Keys also chimed in with a rather mischievous idea for the two-time singles Major champion to try out going forward.
Gauff featured as a guest on a recently-released episode of The Player’s Box Podcast, which is co-hosted by Keys, Jessica Pegula, Jennifer Brady and Desirae Krawczyk. Here, the American women’s tennis stars did a fun segment titled ‘Coco or No-Go’, with one of the questions fielded to the World No. 4 being about reading fans’ comments following defeats.
In response, Gauff laid bare how she tends to type out elaborate replies to hate messages and then ends up not posting them. The 21-year-old said:
“It should be a no-go but I do it because I think it’s very creative, what people come up with. I like to reply back to them and then I don’t press the post button.”
She subsequently recalled certain occasions where she did post replies but deleted them after 30 minutes. According to the 11-time career singles titlist, this allows her critics time to go through her replies but prevents media organizations from capturing screenshots and creating sensational content around them. Gauff added:
“Yeah. A few times I posted it and waited 30 minutes to delete it. It’s enough time for the person to see it but not enough for some article to screenshot it and be like, ‘Coco fires back at haters’.”
Keys went on to playfully urge Gauff to write negative reviews on critics’ businesses. The reigning Australian Open champion also recommended searching for haters on LinkedIn to get to know more about them and the work they do. The World No. 7 said:
“In the future, if you want, you can actually go on to their profile and see if they’ve tagged their business that they work on or anything and you can write reviews and stuff, and get your friends to write reviews. You can look them up on LinkedIn sometimes and then you can cross reference.”
Coco Gauff bounces back from tough United Cup loss in style to help Team USA reach SF
In Team USA’s second Round Robin phase tie at the ongoing 2026 United Cup, Gauff suffered a shocking three-set loss to Spain’s Jessica Bouzas Maneiro. However, despite this result, the American contingent reached the quarterfinals of the international mixed team tennis tournament thanks to Taylor Fritz’s men’s singles win and Gauff’s mixed doubles success partnering Christian Harrison.
In the quarterfinal tie against Greece, Gauff got the USA off to a positive start by registering a dominant 6-3, 6-2 victory against Maria Sakkari. The score became even after Stefanos Tsitsipas downed Fritz in the men’s singles clash. However, Gauff once again showed her mixed doubles prowess by producing a resilient display alongside Harrison to edge Tsitsipas and Maria Sakkari 4-6, 6-4, 10-8 to secure Team USA’s progress to the semis.
