With her Thursday night win over Karolina Muchova in the U.S. Open semifinals, 19-year-old Coco Gauff continued to stake her claim as America’s next great tennis star as she booked a spot in the final.

Unfortunately, much of the talk about her match was instead focused on the climate protestors that temporarily halted the action on the court.

Although the protestors were booed relentlessly by the crowd, Gauff had a much more civil response.

“I don’t really know exactly what they were protesting. I know it was about the environment,” Gauff said after the match. “And I 100% believe in that. I think there are things that we can do better. I know the tournaments are doing things to do better for the environment.

“Would I prefer it not happening in my match? A hundred percent, yeah. I’m not gonna sit here and lie, but it is what it is … and I had a feeling it was gonna happen this tournament. It happened in the French Open. It happened in Wimbledon. So following the trend, it was definitely gonna happen here.”

Gauff also acknowledged that the protest was peaceful, so it was hard for her to be very mad at the demonstration.

Still, she joked, she was playing with a lot of momentum and would have liked to continue that.

“Obviously, I don’t want it to happen when I’m winning, up 6-4, 1-0,” she said with a laugh. “I wanted the momentum to keep going; but hey, if that’s what they felt they needed to do to get their voices heard, I can’t really get upset at it.”

Watch above via Twitter

The post ‘We Can Do Better’: Coco Gauff Offers Kind Words For Climate Protestors Who Were Relentlessly Booed For Delaying Her U.S. Open Match first appeared on Mediaite.

from Mediaite https://ift.tt/q6BjyhP