Coco Gauff is making it look easy at the Paris Olympics so far, adding a 6-1, 6-1 victory over Maria Lourdes Carle of Argentina in the second round of singles
US' Coco Gauff returns to Argentina's Maria Lourdes Carle during their women's singles second round tennis match on Court Suzanne-Lenglen at the Roland-Garros Stadium at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, in Paris. Pic/AFP
Coco Gauff is making it look easy at the Paris Olympics so far, adding a 6-1, 6-1 victory over Maria Lourdes Carle of Argentina in the second round of singles on Monday to her growing collection of lopsided results. So what if Gauff had more than twice as many unforced errors, 26, as winners, 11? So what if she only put 55% of her first serves in play? So what if she wound up with six double-faults and zero aces? So what if it took nearly 1 1/2 hours for the reigning U.S. Open champion and No. 2-ranked Gauff to finish off an opponent who is ranked 85th, has never won a tour-level singles title and owns an 0-2 career record at Grand Slam tournaments? "You can't argue with the scoreline, to be honest," the 20-year-old American said. Sure can't. Look at what she's managed to do so far at her first Olympics: Not only is Gauff 3-0 across singles and women's doubles, where her partner is Jessica Pegula, but she has dropped a combined total of only nine games across six sets in those three matches.
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"I knew that she was just going to probably try to out-rally me, which I feel like is one of my strengths. But also I had the ability to be aggressive," Gauff said about the matchup with Carle, someone she was familiar with from their days as junior players. "So I think I was just trying to balance the mistakes and not let her win a lot of points off my racket." Her match was played at Court Suzanne Lenglen at the same time that, across the way at Court Philippe Chatrier, Novak Djokovic was beating Rafael Nadal 6-1, 6-4 in the 60th head-to-head matchup between two rivals with 46 Grand Slam titles between them. Gauff said she was "kind of sad" that she missed the chance to watch a contest between two players who "mean a lot" to their sport. Men moving into the third round included Carlos Alcaraz, who is scheduled to team with Nadal in doubles for Spain on Tuesday and defeated Tallon Griekspoor of the Netherlands 6-1, 7-6 (3) in singles on Monday night.
Alcaraz needed a medical timeout for treatment on a hip in the second set, then was a point from getting pushed to a third, but finished the job. Alcaraz won the French Open last month for his third Grand Slam title, then added a fourth at Wimbledon this month. Other winners were Casper Ruud of Norway and Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece, who both have reached French Open finals. In other action around the same facility used for the French Open, where Nadal won 14 of his 22 major championships, three-time major champion Angelique Kerber was a 6-4, 3-6, 6-4 winner against Jaqueline Adina Cristian of Romania, and Wimbledon champ Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic and Wimbledon runner-up Jasmine Paolini of Italy advanced in straight sets. Gauff's American teammates Danielle Collins and Emma Navarro both won. Collins eliminated 2018 Australian Open title winner Caroline Wozniacki 6-3, 3-6, 6-3. The next opponent for Gauff will be Donna Vekic, a Croatian who was a semifinalist at Wimbledon a little more than two weeks ago and got past 2019 U.S. Open champion Bianca Andreescu of Canada 6-3, 6-4 on Monday.
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Gauff vs. Vekic was scheduled for Tuesday, as was the first-round match for Gauff and Taylor Fritz in mixed doubles. Gauff is hoping to win three medals at these Games " in singles, doubles and mixed doubles. Since tennis returned to the Olympics in 1988, no player has ever left a single Games with medals from three events. On Monday, Gauff was not at all concerned by the heat, which rose into the 80s Fahrenheit for the first time during the Paris Olympics. Being from Florida means that sort of thing is not a big deal to Gauff, although she made some concessions, wearing ice-filled towels to cool off during changeovers and taking an ice bath after the match. "I'm just trying my best to be preventative before maybe I feel fatigue and everything," Gauff said. "Obviously, my last two matches, I went quick. So I'm just trying to think for the future, towards the end of the tournament."
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