frances tiafoe helped turn a Rome Open night out into a joke about shades, sunglasses and a gelato bill. Coco Gauff said she and fellow players, including Jessica Pegula, went out for gelato in Rome and that the group had to pay for it.
Gauff said, "We all had to pay for our gelato." She added, "I was like, you're not going to pay, Big Mama?" and said, "I think that video is going to be one of their most viewed videos, so I feel like we should get something out of it."
Gauff, Pegula and Tiafoe in Rome
The outing came during the Rome Open week, when players were moving between matches and time away from the court. Gauff appeared on Jessica Pegula's Player's Box podcast to review the gelato stop, and she also said, "She (Pegula) asked us, and I didn't give her the idea, but I gave her ideas for the player box" during an interview on the Tennis channel.
That left Tiafoe as part of the punchline. Gauff said, "We were in a restaurant and he walked out and put on shades." When asked about it, she said, "I was like, why are you putting on sunglasses?"
Frances Tiafoe and the shades
Gauff did not stop there. She said, "I make fun of him because he thinks he's like LeBron," before adding, "But it's funny, so I think it works for him." The comment fit the same easygoing tone she used about the Rome gelato bill, where the group tried to turn a simple night out into content and a running joke.
The conversation landed in the middle of Gauff's clay-court work ahead of the French Open. She is world No. 3, won the French Open title in 2025, and said she is fine-tuning her clay-court game after recent serves became part of the discussion, including seven double faults in a match against Tereza Valentova.
Gauff's Rome stories also sat against a longer clay swing that included Madrid and Rome last season, when she reached the finals in both events. For her, the restaurant scene was lighter than the work ahead, but it also showed the kind of off-court chemistry that follows players from one stop to the next as they head toward Paris.
