Coco Gauff has revealed that it was ‘tempting’ to fire shots at Aryna Sabalenka after the Belarusian’s bitter French Open speech.

Sabalenka has since apologised after saying in the aftermath of her French Open final defeat against Gauff: “I think she won the match not because she played incredible, just because I made all of those mistakes from, like, if you look from the outside, kind of like from easy balls.”

The pair have made up and have even practised together at Wimbledon this week.

Gauff said: “I’m not someone to hold a grudge. I was talking to my circle about it. I was like, if she apologises, like, not even publicly, it was just more so privately, I will be fine, and we’ll move on.

“She did, and she did again when I saw her before we practised. Yeah, it was just water under a bridge. I know Aryna. I felt like before that, we got along pretty well anyways before all that happened. It wasn’t very hard to accept that apology.

“At first it was a little tempting [to hit back] just because the apology did come a little bit later. I thought it was going to come pretty quick.

“But after that, I mean, I didn’t want to fuel more hate. I’m not the person that will fuel, like, hate in the world. I think people were taking it too far.

“It wasn’t even more holding someone accountable. It was just really like targeting and saying a lot of things that I felt like were not nice. I didn’t want to fuel that more.”