Brad Gilbert took to X to express his surprise at the number of times Laura Siegemund ran down the match clock between points against Coco Gauff at the 2023 US Open.
Gilbert, who joined Coco Gauff's coaching team during the US swing, was courtside along with Pere Riba. He was in disbelief at how the German qualifier was left unpunished by the chair umpire in the early part of the match for 'purposely' wasting time between points.
Gilbert could not fathom Siegemund running down the serve clock to 15 seconds after 'a three-ball rally'. He admitted on X that it isn't his way of practice to vent after a match and call out opponents, but he was unhappy with Siegemund's conduct. The celebrated American coach feels the German should have been penalized a lot sooner.
"I don’t like to vent too often. I was so surprised that umpire would not call time violation when the player was consistently not having toss in the air well past zero sometimes 10-15 seconds past after 3-ball rally. It was beyond ridiculous, finally a time violation in 3rd set."
Gauff complained to the chair umpire in the early stages of the third set and Siegemund was eventually docked a point after a couple of time violations in the set. Siegemund did not retreat from responding to the incident after the match.
She was visibly emotional as she burst into tears in the press room. Siegemund bemoend the crowd's unfair and harsh treatment. The 35-year-old was left downbeat by the whole ordeal but says she walked out of the match with her head held high.
"They treated me like I was a cheater. Like I was like, trying sneaky ways to win this match or something. They treated me like I was a bad person."
"At the end of the day, I go home and I look at myself and I can say I did a great job, but did I get anything from people for that? I didn't. Maybe it's not zero. Maybe it feels like zero right now. But it feels pretty much like a flat zero, even less than zero because they treated me bad."
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