Atlanta native 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 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.
“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 defeated Tallon Griekspoor of the Netherlands 6-1, 7-6 (3) on Monday night. Alcaraz needed a medical timeout for treatment from a trainer for a groin muscle issue in the second set, then was a point from getting pushed to a third, but finished the job.
“It’s a pain that I’ve been dealing with,” Alcaraz said, mentioning that it bothered him during his run to the Wimbledon championship this month. “I know what I have to do … to deal with this pain.”
Alcaraz, a 21-year-old who also won the French Open in June for one of his four Grand Slam titles, is scheduled to team with Nadal in doubles for Spain on Tuesday against Griekspoor and Wesley Koolhof.
“I will try to recover as soon and as (best) as I can tonight,” Alcaraz said, “to be … 100% tomorrow in my doubles.”
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, but the fifth-seeded Pegula was eliminated from singles 4-6, 6-1, 6-3 by Tokyo Games bronze medalist Elina Svitolina of Ukraine in the day’s last match. Collins eliminated 2018 Australian Open title winner Caroline Wozniacki 6-3, 3-6, 6-3.
Gauff, Collins and Navarro give the United States three women in the third round of Olympics singles for the first time since 2004, when Venus Williams, Lisa Raymond and Chanda Rubin did it at the Athens Games.
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.
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.”
