Wimbledon, England – It didn’t take long for Coco Gough and Arena Sabalenka to form a relationship after this month’s French Open final.
As Wimbledon is about to start, Goff hopes that everyone else can forget what Top Rank Sabalenka said in the wake of Roland Garos’ defeat to the Americans.
The day after they danced together on Wimbledon’s centre court in Tiktok’s video, the two tennis players said on Saturday that the aftermath of Sabalenka’s comments had more to do with their mistakes than Gouf’s performance.
The Belarusian later wrote to Goff to apologize, saying that while her comments were “professional,” she wasn’t in the face of a major backlash from fans and experts, especially in the US.
Gouf is trying to make sure the criticism stops.
“I’m not the type of person who burns hatred in the world,” said Gouf, who opened the Wimbledon campaign against Dayana Yastremska on Tuesday. “I think people were over-done it… It was just really targeting and saying there wasn’t a lot of what I felt. I didn’t want to fuel it any more.”
Sabalenka, who faces Carson Branstin at the 1st court on Monday, said she hopes that Tiktok’s video shows everything between the two.
“We’re fine, we’re friends,” said the three-time major winner. “I hope that the US media can do it easily for me now.”
Sabalenka reiterated that she had no intention of making Gouf mad.
“I was totally mad at myself and the emotions got over me,” she said. “I lost it completely.”
Gouf admitted that she was initially tempted by Sabalenka to publicly fight back.
However, after Sabalenka reached out to apologize, she quickly buried the grim.
“I preach love, I preach light,” Goff said. “We want us to become kunbaya, live happily, become hakuna matata, and be happy here.”
Others were also pleased to see the top two female players getting along well again.
“It’s nice to see them turning the pages about it,” said Francis Tiafour, who finished 12th in the Wimbledon men’s bracket. “That’s the biggest thing, because they’re the best players in the world. So those relationships are what you need.”
The American then added with a laugh.