PARIS — Coco Gauff brought about a quick and amusing delay on the French Open on Tuesday when she stepped onto Court docket Philippe-Chatrier with out her rackets.
Gauff regarded confused earlier than a ball boy ran out minutes later carrying her pack of rackets.
“That is higher,” mentioned the court docket announcer, drawing laughter, applause and smiles from the gang within the match’s primary stadium.
Regardless of the mix-up, No. 2-seeded Gauff went on to defeat Australia’s Olivia Gadecki 6-2, 6-2 in her opening match.
The American jokingly blamed her coach for the lacking rackets.
“Actually, so long as I have been on tour, my coach has at all times put the rackets within the bag earlier than the match as a result of he is very superstitious,” she mentioned. “I am blaming it on my coach. It is OK.”
Gauff later poked enjoyable at herself on social media, posting a picture of a French Open to-do listing to X with “put tennis rackets in bag” unchecked together with the caption, “oops, forgot the final one.”
oops, forgot the final one pic.twitter.com/ajqcgFg6mn
— Coco Gauff (@CocoGauff) Might 27, 2025
Gadecki additionally discovered humor within the incident.
“Now that I give it some thought, it looks like that was the one method I used to be going to win the match,” she mentioned about Gauff’s empty-handed arrival. “It was a humorous little incident.”
Gauff was a 2022 finalist at Roland-Garros and is among the many title contenders once more.
Elsewhere within the girls’s bracket Tuesday, wild card Lois Boisson recovered from a second set wobble to stun twenty fourth seed Elise Mertens of Belgium 6-4, 4-6, 6-3.
American No. 3 seed Jessica Pegula carved out a snug 6-2, 6-4 victory over Romanian Anca Todoni to advance to the second spherical.
Additionally, former French Open runner-up Sofia Kenin eased previous Frenchwoman Varvara Gracheva 6-3, 6-1 and Russian 6-seed Mirra Andreeva defeated Spain’s Cristina Bucsa 6-4, 6-3.
In the meantime, Polish 25-seed Magdalena Frech defeated Tunisia’s former Wimbledon and US Open runner-up Ons Jabeur 7-6 (4), 6-0.
Within the final girls’s match of the day, unseeded American Alycia Parks, ranked 52nd on the earth, beat No. 14 seed Karolina Muchova 6-3, 2-6, 6-1. Muchova was the runner-up to Iga Swiatek at Roland-Garros in 2023.
The Related Press and Reuters contributed to this report.