“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.
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. 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.
