Gauff, Cori (2004- )

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      Sloane Stephens Beats Coco Gauff at the U.S. Open

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      Stephens relied on her experience as the 2017 U.S. Open champion, and her wicked forehand, to outmaneuver the 17-year-old Gauff in straight sets, 6-4, 6-2.The guard is changing in women’s tennis, and with Serena Williams not playing this year’s U.S. Open, the night session in Arthur Ashe Stadium on Wednesday was left to the leaders of the generations of American players who have followed.On one side of the net was Sloane Stephens, 28, and the 2017 U.S. Open champion. On the other was Coco Gauff, the youngest player in the top 100 at age 17 and the highest seeded American left in either singles draw, at No. 21.Both are based in South Florida and they have known each other for years, but had never faced each other on the professional tennis tour. Though Gauff is the higher-ranked player, Stephens took control of the match and never relinquished it to win 6-4, 6-2, in just one hour and six minutes.With heavy rain drumming on the closed roof, it was difficult to hear the ball bounce or the calls of “out” from the prerecorded voice that is used in the electronic line calling system.But hearing was not required to grasp the power and precision of Stephens’s forehand. It is her signature shot, once judged the best in the women’s game in a New York Times poll of players and coaches, and it was the decisive shot against Gauff.“The forehand was key today,” Stephens said. “I wanted to come out here and really execute and play my game, and I was able to do that well, and I’m really pleased with how I played.”Stephens hit eight winners with the forehand: bolts from the baseline and well-struck passing shots when Gauff pushed forward. But that number did not sum up the damage. Stephens also rushed Gauff repeatedly with the shot, forcing errors even off Gauff’s more reliable wing, the backhand.Stephens varied the pace, but she also brought the pace when she felt it was required, and she struck the balance just right.She served effectively, putting 84 percent of her first serves in play and winning 80 percent of the points when she did so. Her average serve speeds were significantly lower than Gauff’s, but her precision was superior.When the match ended decisively with a love hold, Stephens quickly transformed into a supportive rival, telling Gauff “I love you” and hugging her at the net.“I think everyone knows I love Coco,” Stephens said. “She’s such a great player, and I feel so lucky to have seen her grow up and see her play from when she was like 8 years old. I have seen her game really transition and change. I’m really proud of the player she is and the girl she is and the woman she is becoming.” More

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      U.S. Open in the U.S. and Canada: What to Watch on Wednesday

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      Sloane Stephens and Coco Gauff will meet on the third day of action at Flushing Meadows.How to watch: From noon to 6 p.m. Eastern time on ESPN; 7 to 11 p.m. on ESPN2; and streaming on the ESPN app. In Canada on TSN from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; and streaming on TSN.ca and the TSN app.Matches to keep an eye on.Because of the number of matches cycling through courts, the times for individual matchups are estimates and may fluctuate based on when earlier play is completed. All times are Eastern.LOUIS ARMSTRONG STADIUM | 11 a.m.Andrea Petkovic vs. Garbiñe MuguruzaGarbiñe Muguruza, a two-time major champion, has never been past the round of 16 at the U.S. Open. After a pair of tiebreakers secured her first-round victory, she will hope to have an easier path forward. But Andrea Petkovic has beaten Muguruza in each of their three meetings on tour. With the last meeting in 2016, before Muguruza’s Grand Slam tournament titles, Muguruza will look to shake off any mental blocks and push past Petkovic’s aggressive style of play.Félix Auger-Aliassime of Canada will play qualifiers in his first two rounds.Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesCOURT 5 | 2 P.M.Félix Auger-Aliassime vs. Bernabé Zapata MirallesFélix Auger-Aliassime, the 12th seed, overcame Evgeny Donskoy, a qualifier, in the first round, but needed four sets, with three tiebreakers, to secure passage into the second round, where he will face another qualifier.Bernabé Zapata Miralles beat Feliciano López in five sets for his first main draw victory at a major championship. The victory will propel him into the top 100 when the men’s rankings are recalculated next week, after Miralles secured three Challenger-level titles within the last year.ARTHUR ASHE STADIUM | 7 p.m.Sloane Stephens vs. Coco GauffCoco Gauff, the 21st seed, eked past Magda Linette on Monday night, coming back from a set and a break down to win in three sets. Sloane Stephens, the 2017 U.S. Open women’s singles champion, also needed three sets to reach the second round, beating Madison Keys, whom she also beat in the 2017 final. The two Americans will meet for the first time: Stephens will hope to overwhelm Gauff with powerful groundstrokes before the 17-year-old can adjust with a counterpunching rhythm.LOUIS ARMSTRONG STADIUM | 7 p.m.Kevin Anderson vs. Diego SchwartzmanKevin Anderson and Diego Schwartzman will provide a study in contrasts in their fourth meeting on tour. Schwartzman, at 5 feet 7 inches, is over a foot shorter than Anderson, who is 6-8, and their heights define their style of play. Anderson has a powerful serve-and-volley game, which allows him to penetrate into the court easily. Schwartzman is more defensive, using his movement and excellent positional sense to outmaneuver opponents even as they limit his space.Sleeper match of the day.COURT 9 | 11 a.m.Philipp Kohlschreiber vs. Pablo AndújarPhilipp Kohlschreiber and Pablo Andújar are veterans of the men’s tour. Each made his debut in the early 2000s. Each feels most comfortable at the baseline, grinding out points and wearing out his opponent. For the casual fan, watching them can be a demonstration of just how much effort a best-of-five-sets match can extract from a player. For junior athletes, it can be a lesson in patience and consistency. More

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      Naomi Osaka Beats Coco Gauff, Into the Round of 16 in Cincinnati

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      It was a reaffirming victory for Osaka, who dropped the first set but kept her composure and found a way to impose her power game on Coco Gauff.Down a set and a break of serve against Coco Gauff, Naomi Osaka was in danger of making a quick exit at the Western and Southern Open in her return to the WTA Tour.But Osaka kept her composure, tinkered with her tactics, cut down on errors and found a way to impose her power game on the 17-year-old Gauff.Cracking groundstrokes and above all pounding decisive serves, the No. 2 seed Osaka came back to win 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 and secure a spot in the round of 16 against Jil Teichmann of Switzerland.It was a reaffirming victory for Osaka, who has had an up-and-down season: winning her fourth Grand Slam singles title in February at the Australian Open and then withdrawing after one round at the French Open after her decision not to participate in required news conferences led to a clash with tournament officials.She skipped Wimbledon and then returned for the Olympics in Japan, the nation she represents. She became the first tennis player to light the Olympic cauldron and then lost in the third round of women’s singles to Marketa Vondrousova, missing out on a medal.On Monday, before her opening match against Gauff, Osaka began to cry and briefly broke off her first news conference in nearly three months after thoughtfully answering a question about her relationship with the news media.But she was resolute down the stretch against Gauff on Wednesday, applauding some of Gauff’s best shots while producing plenty of highlights of her own.She lost just one point on her serve in the final set and finished off the victory, fittingly, with an ace.“I’ve had a really weird year,” Osaka said in her on-court interview. “I think some of you know what happened to me this year. I changed my mind-set a lot. Even if I lost, I would have felt that I’m a winner. There’s so much stuff going on in the world.”She said she had done a lot of reflection since her news conference on Monday.“I was wondering why was I was so affected I guess, like what made me not want to do media in the first place,” she said. “And then I was thinking and wondering if I was scared because sometimes I would see headlines of players losing and the headline the next day would be a ‘collapse’ or ‘they’re not that great anymore’. And so then I was thinking, me waking up every day I should feel like I’m winning. Like the choice to go out there and play, to go see fans, that people come out and watch me play, that itself is an accomplishment and I’m not sure when along the way I started desensitizing that and it started not being an accomplishment for me, so I felt I was very ungrateful on that fact.”Osaka remains committed to using her stardom to bring attention to causes that matter to her. Before the tournament, she announced that she would donate her prize money from the Western and Southern Open to disaster relief in Haiti, her father’s native country.“I’m not really doing that much,” she said on Monday. “I could do more. I’m trying to figure out what I could do and where exactly to put my energy, but I would say the prize-money thing is sort of the first thing I thought of that I could do that would raise the most awareness.”Osaka said the constraints of playing during the pandemic have worn on her.“I think definitely this whole Covid thing was very stressful with the bubbles and not seeing people and not having interactions,” she said. “But I guess seeing the state of the world, how everything is in Haiti and how everything is in Afghanistan right now is definitely really crazy and for me just to be hitting a tennis ball in the United States right now and have people come and watch me play is, I don’t know, like I would want to be myself in this situation rather than anyone else in the world.”Osaka has played relatively little tennis this season. Wednesday’s match was her first in a tour event since her first-round victory at the French Open in May. The Olympics, though prestigious, does not award ranking points and is not an official part of the tour.But hardcourts remain far and away Osaka’s best surface. Her Grand Slam titles have all come on hardcourts: two at the Australian Open and two at the U.S. Open, which will begin on Aug. 30 in New York.Osaka appeared to be having fun during her second-round match against Gauff.Aaron Doster/USA Today Sports, via Reuters“Of course I’d really love to win this tournament for the extra motivation I have giving an organization my prize money for Haiti,” she said on Monday. “But I accidentally saw my draw, so I know how hard it’s going to be.”Osaka had played Gauff twice before, defeating her 6-3, 6-0 in the third round of the 2019 U.S. Open and losing to her 6-3, 6-4 in the third round of the 2020 Australian Open, where she walked the streets of Melbourne afterward to try to work through her emotions.Wednesday’s match was long-form in comparison with their previous two, but it was still defined by full-cut shots and short rallies. Their longest exchange was just 11 strokes, and both players struggled with consistency on their returns.“I think coming off of Tokyo, coming here and playing her as my first opponent, she’s not really my favorite player to play,” Osaka said. “Mentally I think it’s the most straining to play against her.”But Osaka adjusted her return position on Gauff’s second serve early in the second set, moving back a few steps to give herself more time to react. It paid off with three service breaks, and though Osaka blew hot and cold, she was ultimately the more reliable player.She had three double faults to Gauff’s nine and 31 unforced errors to Gauff’s 45. Above all, as Gauff struggled to control her forehand, Osaka seemed at peace with the moment and the pressure, raising her game when she needed it most.“Just waking up in the morning is a win,” Osaka said. More

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      At Wimbledon One Final Day of Rest, and One Last Manic Monday

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      Starting in 2022, the tournament will eliminate its traditional “middle Sunday” off and instead spread fourth-round matches across Sunday and Monday.WIMBLEDON, England — Wimbledon paused midtournament for the last time on Sunday. The practice courts were busy, but as usual no fans were admitted to the grounds and no official matches were played despite the rare presence of sunshine. More

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      To Get Better at Being Single, Coco Gauff Is Making It a Double

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      The American teenager keeps winning at Wimbledon, and has used her doubles matches with Caty McNally to improve her tactics playing singles. She’s not the only one.WIMBLEDON, England — Coco Gauff, 17, and Roger Federer, 39, are at opposite ends of their playing careers, but they keep sharing the same highly desirable real estate. More

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      Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams Have Promising Paths at Wimbledon

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      For the first time, seedings at the tournament, which begins on Monday, did not take into account a player’s past performance on grass.Wimbledon conducted its draw on Friday, and for the first time past grass-court success was not a special factor in the seedings.It has been a long road to this moment, but then Wimbledon, the oldest of all the major tennis tournaments, has no shortage of history.Started in 1877, it took 50 years to begin seeding players and nearly 100 more for the All England Club to decide that it would adhere exclusively to computer rankings for the men instead of using a seeding committee or a grass-court seeding formula.“I think it’s the right thing to do,” said Mark Petchey, a coach and former player from Britain who is now a television analyst. “At the end of the day, tennis is very much a meritocracy, and you should definitely get the reward for the matches and the tournaments you’ve played before.”Tennis being tennis, not everyone agrees.“I hate it,” said Brad Gilbert, an ESPN analyst and a former top-five player. “If I’m the commissioner, I like that you can change the seedings on grass based on your success or lack of success on that surface.”But uniformity is now the rule on tour and at the four Grand Slam tournaments, which now all seed the men solely according to the rankings. Wimbledon retains the right to adjust the women’s seedings but has rarely exercised that right. As usual, it followed the rankings precisely this year, even though that meant that the No. 2 seed would be Aryna Sabalenka, the powerful Belarusian who has won just one singles match at Wimbledon and has yet to get past the fourth round in any Grand Slam singles tournament.Sabalenka, ranked fourth, has such a lofty seeding because No. 2 Naomi Osaka and No. 3 Simona Halep have withdrawn from Wimbledon. Osaka did so last week, extending her break from the game to protect her mental health but saying that she would play in the Olympics. Halep, the reigning Wimbledon champion, withdrew shortly before the draw on Friday because of a left calf injury that had already prevented her from playing in the French Open.Halep won the singles title in 2019 with a brilliant performance in the final against Serena Williams. Wimbledon was canceled in 2020 because of the pandemic. Though Halep was eager to try to defend her title and trained this week at the All England Club, her calf remained tightly wrapped. She ultimately decided that she was not fit enough to compete.“I gave it everything I had,” she wrote in a post on Instagram. “After having such special memories from two years ago, I was excited and honored to step back on these beautiful courts as defending champion. Unfortunately, my body didn’t cooperate.”She joins an increasingly long list of absentees. The men’s tournament will be without the two-time champion Rafael Nadal, the 2016 Wimbledon finalist Milos Raonic and the Grand Slam singles champions Dominic Thiem and Stan Wawrinka. The women’s tournament will also be without the American Jennifer Brady, who lost to Osaka in the final of this year’s Australian Open; she has developed plantar fasciitis.Despite Brady’s withdrawal, 21 American women are in the singles draw, the most since 1995 and by far the most women from any nation this year. The field includes the 41-year-old Venus Williams and the 39-year-old Serena Williams. Venus first played at Wimbledon in 1997 and has won five of its singles titles, the most recent in 2008. Serena first played in 1998 and has won seven singles titles, the most recent in 2016.Venus, who is unseeded in what could be the final Wimbledon for both sisters, will open against Mihaela Buzarnescu, a 33-year-old Romanian with a Ph.D. in sports science. Serena, seeded sixth, will face the unseeded Aliaksandra Sasnovich, a former top-30 player from Belarus.Serena, still chasing a record-tying 24th Grand Slam singles title, has a promising draw. If she reaches the fourth round, she could face the 17-year-old American Coco Gauff, who is seeded 20th in her second Wimbledon, after a stirring run to the fourth round in her debut in 2019.Ashleigh Barty, the No. 1 women’s seed, will play Carla Suárez Navarro in the first round. Their match should be played on Centre Court and give Suarez, a former top-10 player returning from cancer treatment, a fittingly grand stage for her comeback.Novak Djokovic, the world No. 1 and the reigning men’s singles champion, will play on Centre Court on Monday against Jack Draper, a 19-year-old British wild card. Djokovic’s draw looks clement, even if he could face a second-round rematch with Kevin Anderson, the tall, big-serving South African who is now ranked 103rd. Djokovic defeated him in the 2018 Wimbledon final.Djokovic, on track for a Grand Slam after winning this year’s Australian Open and French Open, is heavily favored to defend his title and the men’s record of 20 major singles titles, now shared by Nadal and Roger Federer. The other leading contender in his half of the draw is No. 3 seed Stefanos Tsitsipas, the young Greek whom Djokovic defeated on clay in the French Open final. Tsitsipas’s all-court game also looks well suited to grass, and his first-round opponent is the American Frances Tiafoe.“I don’t know if it’s this year or next year, but I’d be very surprised if Tsitsipas doesn’t win Wimbledon,” Gilbert said. “I’m very impressed with his movement, willingness to play defense and his transition game. He knows how to move forward.”So, of course, does Federer, an eight-time Wimbledon champion. He is in the other half of the draw with No. 2 seed Daniil Medvedev and No. 7 Matteo Berrettini, the forceful Italian who won the grasscourt title at the Queen’s Club Championships last week.Federer, 39, lost to Djokovic in a classic five-set final in 2019, after holding two match points. He is back for at least one more Wimbledon after two knee surgeries, but he has struggled for consistent form in his few tour appearances this season. Federer, the sixth seed, faces a tricky first-round opponent in Adrian Mannarino, a flat-hitting French veteran who thrives on grass.The surface remains an unusual challenge even though playing conditions are now more similar to hardcourts than in the serve-and-volley days of Rod Laver and Pete Sampras. The All England Club switched to more durable grass in 2002. The bounces are higher, and baseline play is now the rule instead of the exception.“Grasscourt tennis is still different, even if it’s nothing like the ’80s or ’90s when you’d drop the ball on the grass and it didn’t bounce, and it was really imperative to come forward,” Gilbert said.The movement remains specific. It is easier to slip, particularly after a split step on fresh grass behind the baseline. Quick directional shifts can be challenging, and with the tour’s grass-court season lasting only a few weeks, young players often need several seasons to grasp the nuances.“It’s very tough to walk on grass and just pick it up if you practice predominantly on clay or hardcourts,” Petchey said.That was part of the thinking behind preserving a grass-court bias in the Wimbledon seeding. The All England Club sought to balance its draws by giving the best grasscourt players a boost. A seeding committee long made those decisions, but leading men like Gustavo Kuerten and Àlex Corretja grew increasingly disgruntled about being downgraded at Wimbledon. Corretja skipped it altogether in 2000, along with his fellow Spanish stars Juan Carlos Ferrero and Albert Costa.The All England Club responded by eliminating the subjective element, deploying a seeding formula in 2002 that factored in recent grass-court results. But that, too, is now gone for the men. The rankings, and only the rankings, will rule. More

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      Coco Gauff Eliminated in French Open Quarterfinals

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      The American teenager, playing her first Grand Slam quarterfinal, was frustrated and defeated by the unseeded Barbora Krejcikova.PARIS — It was the first Grand Slam singles quarterfinal for Coco Gauff and Barbora Krejcikova and, frankly, you could tell.There were tight groundstrokes into the net, errant service tosses and multiple double faults, reversals of momentum and fortune.To sum up, there was tension in the sunlight as fans — remember those? — shouted “Allez Coco!” from high in the stands in the Philippe Chatrier stadium.Gauff, the American 17-year-old, received the majority of the support, but she could not quite manage to give the Roland Garros public what it desired. After failing to convert five set points in the opening set, she went on to lose to the unseeded Krejcikova, 7-6 (6), 6-3.It has been one of the most surprising French Open women’s tournaments in history, and the trend deepened as Maria Sakkari upset defending champion Iga Swiatek 6-4, 6-4 in Wednesday’s second quarterfinal.Sakkari, a muscular Greek who is seeded 17th, has become a threat to the best: She beat Naomi Osaka in Miami earlier this season on a hardcourt. But Sakkari had not yet broken through at a Grand Slam tournament. She did not crack on Thursday, producing a powerful performance against Swiatek, the 20-year-old from Poland who had not dropped a set at Roland Garros in singles since 2019.Maria Sakkari turned in a powerful performance that upset defending French Open champion Iga Swiatek.Ian Langsdon/EPA, via ShutterstockOn Thursday, Sakkari will face Krejcikova and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova will play Tamara Zidansek. All four women are making their first appearance in a Grand Slam singles semifinal.Gauff, who was the last American left in singles, finished with 25 winners, 41 unforced errors and one mangled racket after destroying it in anger with three swift blows to the red clay after double-faulting to fall behind by 4-0 in the final set.“I’m obviously disappointed that I wasn’t able to close out the first set,” Gauff said. “To be honest, it’s in the past, it already happened. After the match, Enzo, my hitting partner, told me this match will probably make me a champion in the future. I really do believe that.”Gauff was brilliant at times and bamboozled at others. She lost 15 straight points at one stage in the second set. That was not entirely her doing. Krejcikova, a former French Open doubles champion, has begun to come into her own as a singles player and has a wide array of shots and tactical options, as well as baseline power when she chooses to summon it.But Krejcikova, too, struggled with her nerves on Wednesday. She has been open this week about her efforts to manage the mental strain of making her first deep run in singles at a Grand Slam tournament.Krejcikova consulted with her psychologist before her match against Gauff.Caroline Blumberg/EPA, via ShutterstockBefore her fourth-round match with Sloane Stephens, she said she locked herself in a room used by the physiotherapists to talk to her psychologist. “I was actually crying,” she said. “I just felt really, really bad, and I don’t know why.”She said she and her psychologist had a long discussion. “She told me, ‘If you can overcome this, what you feel right now, it’s going to be a huge win, and it doesn’t matter if you’re going to win on the court or lose on the court, because it’s going to be a personal win.’” It turned out to be a win-win as she played a brilliant match to defeat Stephens, mixing her spins and decisions expertly, just as Gauff played her best match of the tournament when she defeated Ons Jabeur in the fourth round, winning in straight sets without a double fault.But Wednesday was a different day. Gauff double-faulted on the opening point of the match and finished with seven, often catching her service tosses and working to control her breathing. After falling behind by 5-0 in the second set, she did not go through the motions. She kept fighting, holding serve, and with the crowd behind her, saving three match points to break Krejcikova’s serve in the next game and then saving two more as she held serve to close to 5-3.Gauff smashed her racket after she double-faulted to fall behind by 4-0 in the final set. Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesAnother momentum swing still felt possible given both players’ inexperience at this level of a Grand Slam tournament. But Krejcikova held firm in the next game and when Gauff missed her final forehand, she became the second unseeded player to reach this year’s French Open semifinals after Zidansek.“This one will be on my mind for a couple days, for sure,” Gauff said. “I think just reflecting on it, you know, it’s over, so I’m not going to say, ‘Oh, if I did this, if I did that.’ I think in the moment I did what I thought was the best decision and I have to stick on that.”Gauff will start preparing for Wimbledon, which begins on June 28. It is where she burst to prominence in 2019 at age 15 by defeating Venus Williams in her first Grand Slam singles match.Her progress since then has been steady rather than meteoric. There will be more to learn from Wednesday’s setback. But this was a positive clay-court season and tournament for the usually much more poised teenager. She reached the semifinals of the Italian Open and won the singles and doubles titles in Parma. She was seeded 24th in Paris — her first time being seeded at a major tournament — and won four matches without dropping a set.“Her time will come,” said Krejcikova, who, at 25, knows a thing or two about patience. More