Zheng Qinwen lights up Beijing

Catherine Whitaker (0:10)

Well, hello, and welcome to The Tennis Podcast, where it is Friday night in the UK. We're expecting Disco David in the house for tonight's show.

Consider it a true mark of how much we love and are dedicated to The Tennis Podcast, but as we speak, The Traitors is broadcasting in the UK, and we are not watching it. And we're fine about that, Matt. We're absolutely fine about it.

Matt Roberts (0:40)

Totally fine. Not thinking about The Traitors at all.

Obviously, the only time we normally miss The Traitors is when we're unconscious after a day at the Australian Open and we wake up and immediately watch The Traitors as the first thing we do during that tournament some days. So yeah, this is a new one. But, you know, we love the pod, so we couldn't miss a pod either.

Catherine Whitaker (1:05)

We love the pod, folks. We are absolutely not at all distracted by thoughts of The Traitors. Let's get straight into it with Beijing and the WTA 1000 event that continues there. I mean, I feel like, I know I say this every year and I'm going to be saying it next week about Shanghai for the ATP, but it does go on a bit, doesn't it?

The non-combined 1000s, the 12-day non-combined 1000s, they go on.

David Law (1:43)

Yeah, they go on. I think Shanghai is even worse. I think Shanghai, because Shanghai comes on the back of Beijing and I mean it just like the players have just started to play the big names and that one seems to be going on for a long time already.

Catherine Whitaker (2:03)

And at least for Beijing, WTA, the early stages of it, which can be a real drag these days because of how many buys there are and how much they've expanded the draws. At least we have the ATP 500 event concurrently. It's not quite a combined 1000 because it's this weird situation of a 1000 and a 500, which I actually think is quite awkward because with 500 events, the top players are paid to be there. So you've got the big names on the ATP side that are getting handsome appearances to be there and you've got the big names on the WTA side that are there because they're required to be there.

I think that's a little bit awkward. But anyway, there's been good tennis.

Matt Roberts (2:49)

And the tournament has been going on for so long and yet we still have the most important matches to go squeezed in to two days.

Catherine Whitaker (2:58)

Yeah, it's extraordinary how tennis manages to achieve that. Let's start with the top half of the draw and let's actually pick up where we left off from our last pod, which was, well, amongst other things, talking about Coco Gauff, who had had a very tough experience in Beijing so far. She had been suffering from racial abuse online, disgusting racial abuse. She had called it out.

We talked about it on the last pod. Absolutely horrifying to see, quite frankly, and perhaps not surprising that what we saw from Coco Gauff in her subsequent match, after all of that, was a very out of sorts performance against, albeit a brilliant, Elise Mertens, who we'll talk more about over the course of today's show. She said the last few days for her had been draining, and Matt, she has now withdrawn from Wuhan, the next event as well. It's not, it is by no means a shock that something as disgusting as this should be so undigestible for anybody. But Coco Gauff, it's so difficult to derail Coco Gauff. I think what we saw against Elise Mertens yesterday and the fact of this withdrawal from Wuhan should be a real, I mean, wake up call, as if anybody's going to pay attention to this. But I don't know, to see Coco Gauff sent off course, sent off balance in this way is quite disarming, I think, and should be a real note of alarm. And I do find it slightly disappointing that we haven't heard anything from the WTA about this.

Matt Roberts (5:03)

Yeah, it was really tough to see her, actually, on court against Mertens.

The commentary that I was listening to, there was mention of the abuse that she'd suffered, but there was also speculation about whether she was injured or whether she was ill. And she did say to her team towards the end of the match that she felt that she was going to pass out on the court. And it just was not the Coco Gauff experience that we're used to. And then for her to talk afterwards about how draining the week had been, you know, I think it was clear then in those quotes that certainly that had been a big influence on the way she was feeling and how she performed. And I feel so sorry for Coco Gauff. Like, it was just a horrible, horrible way that this tournament has turned and what she's experienced, and no one should have to experience that. And I hope she's able to, you know, get some time away and come again strong at the end of the season. She's obviously qualified for the WTA finals, but, you know, I'm not surprised that she needed a change of scenery and just to get out of there, really.