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“Yeah, this definitely sucks,” said a tearful Coco Gauff. She was trying, and struggling, to put her finger on why she had become the most high profile casualty of a typically consequential first round at Wimbledon. “I don’t know, I just feel a little bit disappointed in how I showed up today.”
The question before the tournament was whether Gauff could cement her standing at the top of the game by adding Wimbledon to this year’s French Open title for a “Channel Slam”. The answer turned out to be a rather decisive “no”. The second seed was knocked out in less than two hours on Tuesday evening, with the biggest shock how easily she was dispatched by the Ukrainian Dayana Yastremska.
The 21-year-old was at first outpunched and ultimately outplayed, but in the middle came a collapse all of her own making. An inability to match up against Yastremska’s power in a series of fierce rallies only led to Gauff taking more risks, which rarely came off. When her serve began to depart her in the first set tie-break the writing was on the wall. Gauff said maybe a bit more practice on grass might have helped her efforts, but she couldn’t be certain.
Yastremska seemed almost as nonplussed in victory as Gauff was in defeat. She said she went into the match without even a “small expectation” of winning. “I knew that [Gauff] would not give me one ball for free,” she said. “Today I think I’ve done most of the job. I was leading during the game, during the points. Obviously she plays much playing much better on clay court and hard court and I kind of felt [I have] a bit more priority on grass. But, well, in general, I don’t know!” At which point she burst into laughter.
Gauff beat Venus Williams in her first match at the Championships on a run to the fourth round in 2019 as a 15-year-old. She won the hearts of SW19 then, and the crowd were behind her here, but she is yet to go deeper in the competition and seemed very short on ideas of how to play her way out of the trouble Yastremska was inflicting on her.
The Ukrainian has been the subject of media coverage reporting her apparent allergy to grass, but while an aversion to pollen may or may not have provided the animus, she approached the match with maximum intensity, forcing Gauff on to the back foot from the off with her forehand, a weapon that was as fast as it was precise and stayed consistently low.
Gauff had the bigger serve, but it failed to rattle Yastremska on the defensive and the Ukrainian broke serve for 4-2 in the first set. In response Gauff simply put more power into her strokes, producing some mesmerising exchanges but also increasing the errors. Only rarely did she think instead to switch up her shot selection, with Yastremska much more vulnerable when forced to change her angles of approach before booming her drives.
Gauff broke back at 4-5 and dragged the first set to a tie-break but any hopes of a revival were soon extinguished. In the break she served two double faults and in apparent slow motion, one even after a let of serve. It was like watching her match plans literally fall down around her, not to mention any sense of impregnability that she may have attempted to convey to her opponent. From there things only got worse.
Broken at the first attempt in the second set, Gauff tried once again to plug herself into the mains but the outcome was even wilder and the writing was on the wall. Yastremska broke again for 3-1 and then for 5-1 and a call from the stands of “Don’t worry Coco, don’t worry!” had a distinctly forlorn tone to it. For Yastremska, meanwhile, there was nothing but delight.
The second day of competition at Wimbledon saw other high profile departures from the women’s draw too, including the world No 3 Jessica Pegula who was beaten in straight sets – 6-2, 6-3 – by Elisabetta Cocciaretto in just 58 minutes.
Pegula praised her opponent: “She played absolutely incredible tennis,” she said, but she too was at a loss to explain her defeat. “Do I think I played the best match ever? No. But I definitely don’t think I was playing bad. I haven’t lost first round of a slam in a very long time, so that sucks.”
Elsewhere, the two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova bade farewell to Wimbledon following a 6-3 6-1 loss to the 10th seed Emma Navarro. The 35-year-old wildcard, who returned to the tour in February following the birth of son Petr last summer, intends to retire after this year’s US Open. “I never dreamed of winning Wimbledon and I did it twice so this is something very special,” she told a grateful crowd.
