An aspiring teen tennis champion Coco Gauff was quick to defend her title, as she embarrassed her French opponent Varvara Gracheva 6-2, 6-0 in a 66-minute first-round match in New York on Monday. At the US Open last year, Gauff defeated Venus Williams in the first round and advanced to the third round; this year, to prove her worth after a weak summer.
“If you defend something, that means you won something and if you did it, that means you can do it again,” a grinning Gauff said when asked by the reporters on-court interview. “If I do it this year, I will do it again.
If it is not going to be 2024, I will do it again. ”
Gauff, as the third-seeded player, overwhelmed Gracheva whose world ranking is 66. Gauff won all of her service games without dropping a single point on her own serve, held a 16-5 edge in winners,, and saved nine of the nine break points that she fended off. In particular, Gracheva managed to break the American’s serve twice in the first set, but then Gauff established the domination and won the next nine games.
That match win at Flushing Meadows puts Gauff at an overall 15 matches’ victor at the US Open and she became the youngest woman who has reached that mark since Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. In the second round,, Gauff has been drawn to against Tatjana Maria of Germany.
That was not the case with the American women who began the tournament on a high note. In the first round, No. 13 seed Emma Navarro, who stunned Gauff during Wimbledon, thrashed Russia’s Anna Blinkova 6-1, 6-1. 14th seed Madison Keys knocked out Czech Katerina Siniakova 6-4, 6-1. Other American winners were Peyton Stearns, Taylor Townsend,, and 16-year-old Iva from Jovic beating Magda Linette of Poland in her first grand slam.
However, not every American improved their standing; 2017 US Open winner Stephens was eliminated by French player Clara Burel, 0-6, 7-5, 7-5.
The first top-10 seed to be ousted was Greece’s Maria Sakkari, the ninth seed, who retired from the tournament on the opening day due to a shoulder injury as she lost the first set 6-2 to China’s Yafan Wang.
Other significant upsets were by the Chinese seventh-seeded, Qinwen Zheng; the eighth-seeded, Barbora Krejcikova from the Czech Republic; and No. 19 Marta Kostyuk from Ukraine. The night concluded with a match of quarterfinal second seed Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus against the Australian qualifier Priscilla Hon and she won 6-3, 6-3.