NEW YORK — Coco Gauff didn’t know that she had lost five matches in a row against opponents ranked in the top 50. Elina Svitolina in the third round of the US Open.
Here’s what was clear to Gauff at the time: “I needed a reset.” So before the second set, the 20-year-old from Florida went to the bathroom, changed part of his outfit and splashed water on his face. Then Gauff returned to court and extended her first Grand Slam title defense by turning things around to defeat 27th seed Svitolina 3-6, 6-3, 6-3.
“It feels like a rookie coming out,” said the third-seeded Gauff. “I just don’t want to leave the court with any regrets.”
After making mistake after mistake early in Arthur Ashe Stadium, Gauff managed to win nine of 11 matches with one and won again despite losing the opening set, which she did three times to claim the 2023 trophy at Flushing Meadows, including in the final against Aryna Sabalenka.
“It’s on my mind today. It gives me a lot of confidence,” Gauff said, “just because it feels like déjà vu.”
On Sunday, Gauff will face No. Navarro eliminated Gauff in the fourth round at Wimbledon.
“I did a good job of neutralizing his serve and just playing aggressive from the baseline and denying groundstrokes,” Navarro, from South Carolina and an NCAA title winner for Virginia, said of the match last month. “And definitely get the ball back on the court.”
Navarro advanced Friday with a 6-4, 4-6, 6-3 victory over No. 19 Marta Kostyuk. The other women’s fourth-round match set for the evening was No. 7 Zheng Qinwen against No. 24 Donna Vekic, and No. 26 Paula Badosa against Wang Yafan. No. 2 Sabalenka is among the women scheduled to play on the night, while the program also includes 24-time major champion Novak Djokovic against No. 28 Alexei Popyrin.
The Djokovic-Popyrin winner meets No. 20 Frances Tiafoe, who emerged from an all-American rematch against No. 13 Ben Shelton with a 4-6, 7-5, 6-7 (5), 6-4, 6- 3 win. Shelton defeated Tiafoe in the quarterfinals last year. Another American, No. 12 Taylor Fritz, breezed past Francisco Comesana 6-3, 6-4, 6-2.
The first men’s fourth-round pairing to be arranged is No. 6 Andrey Rublev against No. 9 Grigor Dimitrov.
Zheng-Vekic is a rematch of the gold medal match at the Summer Games four weeks ago; Zheng won that one.
Vekic defeated Gauff in the third round at the Olympics, part of Gauff’s drought against top 50 opponents. It’s also part of a recent slump that has seen Gauff win just five of his previous nine matches.
Contrast that with a year ago, when Gauff won 18 of 19, and 12 in a row, en route to two tuneup titles on hard courts and then a championship at the US Open that made him the first US teenager to win in Flushing. Meadows since Serena Williams in 1999.
According to the conclusion of one set against Svitolina, it seems that another loss can be in the offing. Gauff totaled 16 unforced errors – nine on the backhand – and only seven winners. He only put 45% of his first serves. He went 0 for 3 on break points. She allowed Svitolina to claim 19 of her 28 points over four strokes.
All those numbers got better in the last two sets as Gauff tried to be more aggressive with his forehand and more careful with his backhand. And the rest changed, at the behest of his coach: Gauff got many other partisans involved.
Svitolina spoke after she was bothered by an ankle injury she picked up last week
“I felt like she started to go (for) a little bit more. But to be fair, I didn’t play as well as I wanted to. … Then she started to come more alive,” said Svitolina, a three-time Slam semifinalist. “And, of course, the crowd was behind him.”
Everything started to change for Gauff on Saturday after 1 hour, 10 minutes, when he broke to lead 4-2 in the second set, smacking a cross-court forehand winner. He celebrated by shouting “Let’s go!” and raised his left hand to shake his fingers and ask the audience to get louder.
Soon the plane turned to Gauff, who closed with an ace of 94 mph, shaking his fist and yelling.
In the third, with UConn women’s basketball stars Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd sitting in the guest box at Ashe, Gauff immediately broke, then went up 2-0 with the help of one point 38-stroke that was taken when Svitolina sent. wide backhand.
Soon it was 5-1 for Gauff, the only last wobble came when he went to the match at 5-2. He threw away three match points and broke down there. But Gauff broke right back to close it out.
“I’m glad I had that match,” Gauff said, “because I think it just made my match tougher and maybe prepared me for future challenges.”
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