Australian Open star Coco Gauff hits back after her opponent’s husband found a sneaky way to take a trashy snipe at her

Coco Gauff has returned serve in fine style after the husband of her Australian Open rival Marta Kostyuk took a sneaky shot at her during the pair’s quarter-final clash on Tuesday night.

The American won 7-6 (8-6) 6-7 (3-7) 6-2 as the match went on for more than three hours in the Melbourne heat as she was pushed all the way by the Ukrainian underdog.

Kostyuk’s husband Heorhii was seen courtside wearing a baseball cap bearing the words ‘shake your cocos’ and an image of a coconut that had been broken in half.

While the message left some tennis fans shocked, Gauff appeared to take it in her stride as she made a classy response after the win.

She posted the words ‘shakey shake’ and a love heart and cry-laughing emoji on her Instagram story, accompanied by footage of her taking out match point and celebrating her victory.

Gauff’s good-natured comeback stood in contrast to the reactions from some tennis fans when they saw Heorhii’s hat.

Tacky as hell. Coco is gonna shake herself into the semis,’ one wrote on social media platform X.

‘Kinda rude, I think!!’ posted another.

Other responses included ‘at least fake having redeeming qualities’, ‘trashy behavior’, ‘tasteless take on her opponents’ and ‘what a prat’.

After the win, Gauff conceded she served up a sub-par performance but was satisfied in borrowing a page out of her coach Brad Gilbert’s book to win ugly.

‘Today was definitely a C game,’ said the 19-year-old after becoming the first teenage woman since Maria Sharapova to win 12 consecutive Grand Slam matches this century.

‘I didn’t play my best tennis but really proud that I was able to get through today’s match. Hopefully I got the bad match out of the way and I can play even better.’

The pair racked up 107 unforced errors between them across 246 points, compared to 56 winners in gruelling conditions on RLA.