The discussion regarding the tough nature of anti-doping protocols has increased within the tennis community, as highlighted by Coco Gauff in a recent interview. The American spoke about the brutal rules a player must abide by to avoid penalties, which also lead to unpleasant situations. something that drove the 22-year-old to tears.

“I’m not going to lie, some of them can be pushy, make you feel like you’re doing something wrong”, said Gauff after her first round match at Wimbledon, via Independent. “One time, she came outside my time slot. But the way she spoke to me on the phone literally made me cry afterward. I found out I was in the right, and I didn’t have to do anything.”

The Whereabouts Rule is one of the toughest aspects of the anti-doping protocols for a tennis player, who must notify their exact location every 3 months on an online database and be subject to random testing as part of the Registered Testing Pool.

Players must be vigilant about entering their location details into the database and specify a time slot for each day within a three-month period when they will be available for testing. These time slots are vital, as players face multi-year bans if they miss three doping tests in a row. While players have often spoken out against the whereabouts rule, ITIA has cited random testing as a key ingredient in enabling a clean sport. Testing within fixed schedules will give potentially guilty parties a chance to get rid of PEDs in their system, empowering them to game the system, something a random test won’t allow.

As Gauff stated, collection agents have the authority to enter the player’s designated time zone, which has been the bone of contention in the Marketa Vondrousova case. The former Wimbledon champion refused to take a test last December, saying the collection agent was aggressive in her approach and came outside the time slot, which has resulted in a four-year ban, as decided in a recent independent tribunal hearing.

Gauff’s comments, coming on the back of the Vondrousova incident, show how testing the protocols can be. One can even argue they are invasive to a degree, a view echoed by some players.

Coco Gauff Is Not Alone in Making Complaints

Players other than Gauff, such as Ajla Tomljanovic, have also spoken about the difficulties of complying with the whereabouts rule. The Australian player pointed out the technical vagaries within the anti-doping protocols, which could be confusing for people new to the system, and there was no proper guidance from the collection agents, which always puts players at risk, as refusal to take a test three times has severe consequences.

“I don’t want to say they don’t care — but they weren’t very helpful at all to explain things or just show some sort of compassion when I was nowhere near missing a test or testing positive,” said Tomljanovic. “I was new to the whole system. And I was at two fails for a month, and I knew if I got a third one accidentally, I would be out for at least two to three years.”

The clearest example of this was Serena Williams’s comeback story. The whole media world and the tennis community were all but sure of the American’s on-court comeback when she returned to the testing pool last year, which brought her under the whereabouts rule. Williams cited the tiring nature of these protocols and also confessed that they were among the obstacles that were making her second-guess her decision to come back.

Other players, like Pegula, have said the punishment is not commensurate with the so-called violation in cases like Vondrousova’s. The American compared the Czech player’s case with those of Jannik Sinner and Iga Swiatek in recent years, both of whom were suspended for a few months despite failing doping tests that found banned substances in their systems, though the substances were accidental contaminants. It remains to be seen how the Vondrousova matter unfolds, but for the 27-year-old, the path to her comeback will presumably be tough.