Coco Gauff hopes TikTok ban in United States is short-lived - ESPN

MELBOURNE, Australia — American tennis star Coco Gauff mourned the loss of TikTok's app back home, writing on a TV camera lens «RIP TikTok USA» and drawing a broken heart right after winning a match at the Australian Open to reach the quarterfinals.

Gauff's 5-7, 6-2, 6-1 victory over Belinda Bencic in the Grand Slam tournament's main stadium finished on Sunday afternoon local time in Melbourne — about an hour after TikTok could no longer be found on prominent app stores on Saturday in the United States.

The TikTok website told users that the short-form social media video platform was no longer available. The blackout began just hours before a federal ban on TikTok took effect.

Gauff, who has more than 750,000 followers on TikTok, said Sunday that she would probably have more time to pursue other interests with the app inaccessible on her phone in Melbourne.

«I could not access it after my match. I honestly thought I would be able to get away with it because I was in Australia,» Gauff said at her news conference. «Hopefully it comes back.… It's really sad. I've been on the app since it was called Musical.ly. I love TikTok. It's like an escape. I honestly do that before matches. I guess it will force me to read books more — be more of a productive human, probably. Maybe it's a blessing in disguise.»

Tennis players at many tournaments often are handed a pen after a win so they can deliver whatever thoughts they want via the lens of a courtside camera. In this case, Gauff paused a bit to think and said, «I think I'm going to go with this one,» before offering her TikTok message in blue ink.

At the French Open in June 2022, after reaching her first Grand Slam final as a teenager, Gauff referred to a recent spate of mass