Tennis champ Coco Gauff was not feeling the love for a cartoon used to promote American tennis players at the Australian Open.
The cartoon, created by the US Tennis Association, depicted each seeded player in the style of a Wild Thornberrys character and was posted to social media before being hastily deleted.
Gauff, US Open champion and number four in the world in women's tennis, took to her Instagram Story to respond to what she jokingly called the "worst thing I’ve ever seen."
Along with a shot of the cartoon, Gauff wrote:
"Worst thing I've ever seen. Like a caricature artist decided to make [us] all look like hideous looking people."
Gauff later added that the "artist did great" creating the cartoon, which depicts Gauff along with fellow tennis stars Sebastian Korda, Taylor Fritz, Frances Tiafoe, Tommy Paul, Emma Navarro, Ben Shelton and Jessica Pagula.
But it's hard to argue with her that the cartoon really is hilarious—for all the wrong reasons.
@cocogauff/Instagram
Along with several laughing emojis, Gauff went on to say:
"The art style is cool for a cartoon show but not for a hype post. Foul."
What else can you do but laugh when your national tennis governing body makes you look like a dead-behind-the-eyes weirdo?
And Gauff was far from the only tennis star to have the same response. Gauff's doubles partner and number five-ranked Pagula replied to the post, "hahahahhaha we are ugly af" while Shelton said he "better not find out who did this."
Many on Twitter took Gauff's response to be serious and angry, but she said that while she and her fellow players truly aren't enthused with the cartoon, they have been laughing about it for days, starting when Shelton posted it and then texted it to Gauff.
She told The Independent:
"We were just laughing at each person, we were laughing at Sebi [Korda]'s, I think Ben and Sebi had the worst ones."
On social media, many laughed right along with the tennis stars.
Gauff said she reached out to the USTA to jokingly ask what they were thinking, but she "got left on read by USTA."
Oh well!
