Tennis fans are crying foul after ESPN botched a graphic featuring the Williams sisters.
During ESPN’s US Open quarterfinal coverage on Wednesday, the network aired a graphic showing the most major wins among American women before their 23rd birthday in the Open era.
While the graphic showed Venus Williams has the most at 107 and sister Serena has 103, it had a photo of Serena where Venus was — so there were two photos of Serena.
“@espn Please do better. This is unprofessional,” X user Andrew Atkinson wrote along with a photo of the error.
Another X user, Nafari Morris, thanked Atkinson for snapping a photo of the mistake.
“Could not believe what I was seeing,” Morris wrote.
Reddit users were also displeased.
“For how bad ESPN is, they should be embarrassed over this,” one person wrote on the r/tennis subreddit.
“Zero excuses,” another wrote.
However, one Reddit user did provide a possible excuse.
“Graphics person was probably up late for the Shelton match and didn’t get much sleep lol,” the user said.
They were referring to Ben Shelton’s thrilling five-set quarterfinal win over reigning champion Carlos Alcaraz that began late Tuesday night and ended at 3:33 a.m. ET after four hours and 28 minutes.
The purpose of the graphic was to show where Coco Gauff ranked. At the time she was fifth with 89 wins in Grand Slam tournaments, one shy of Chris Evert and four shy of Mary Joe Fernandez.
Gauff then fought off multiple match points against Mirra Andreeva later Wednesday to win 2-6, 7-6 (7), 6-2 to tie Evert and reach the semifinals, where she’ll face No. 2 seed Elena Rybakina on Thursday night.
The 22-year-old Gauff, who won the U.S. Open in 2023 and the French Open in 2025, turns 23 next March, so she could tie or pass Fernandez during the 2027 Australian Open.
