Having failed to make an impression on Iga Swiatek in six previous meetings, Coco Gauff finally made her mark on the Polish world No 1 at Roland Garros. Whether it was in the manner she would have wished is another matter.
Early in the second set of an entertaining quarter-final, Gauff followed a drop shot into the net. It was a tactic to which the American sixth seed made frequent recourse on an afternoon when she explored various ways to unsettle the top seed and, having just botched an almost identical opportunity that would have earned her three break points, Gauff showed that she was determined not to repeat the same mistake twice.
On the first occasion, Gauff seemed to pull out of a backhand drive when she spied the defending champion bearing down on the net, a late change of heart that resulted in a tame lob sailing over the baseline. Was she trying to avoid hitting her opponent from point-blank range? Whatever the case, this time around the 19-year-old held nothing back, blasting a full-bore drive volley straight into the upper right thigh of Swiatek, who toppled backwards on to the clay.
Gauff may have succeeded in knocking the world No 1 off her feet, but she ultimately came no closer to knocking her out of the tournament than she did 12 months ago, when Swiatek crushed her in the final to win her second title. This was undoubtedly an improvement on last summer’s showing, yet the manner of Swiatek’s 6-4, 6-2 win was barely less emphatic, the 22-year-old reeling off eight of the final 10 games to set up a semi-final meeting with Beatriz Haddad Maia, who recovered from a set down to defeat Ons Jabeur, the seventh seed, 3-6, 7-6 (7-5), 6-1.
“I don’t really know if that was her only option or not,” smiled Swiatek when asked about the incident. “But I know Coco is a nice person, and she wouldn’t mean it. Nothing personal. It happens.”
Gauff, who immediately raised her hands in apology, said she had not intended to hit Swiatek, but admitted that her decision-making was influenced by her previous miss. The teenager also made the valid point that Swiatek, rather than retreating, stood her ground at the net, effectively making her fair game.
“I mean, the last point I lost because I was avoiding the… I kind of shanked the backhand,” said Gauff. “The next one, I said, ‘If I get it again, I’m going to hit my target.’ It wasn’t her. I didn’t try to hit her. I was just trying to hit the ball hard in the middle of the court, and it happened to hit her obviously.”
“I apologised after, but I think she knows that’s part of the game. If you hit a bad ball and you decide to run to the net, there’s always a risk that you get hit, and there’s always the risk that the person might miss trying to avoid you.
“It worked the first time. The second time it didn’t work. But if I was in her position, I wouldn’t be mad at me either because she ran forward. I think when I said sorry, she shook her head, and we had a mutual understanding that that was the only shot I really had.”
In many ways, the moment encapsulated Gauff’s performance on an afternoon when the soundness of her approach was not always matched by the quality of her execution. Drawing Swiatek forward with drop shots made sense, given that the Pole is neither as comfortable nor as dextrous at the net as Gauff, a double grand slam finalist and world No 3 in doubles. Targeting Swiatek’s second serve, while hardly a novel tactic, was equally pragmatic.
Yet the fact remains that the top seed won six of the 10 points she played at the net, and claimed 75% of her second serve points. Gauff’s tally of 23 unforced errors, many of which came as she blasted returns wide or long, did not help. Neither did the punishment Swiatek meted out to Gauff’s second serve, behind which the American had a success rate of just 29% in the second set.
More successful, in the early stages at least, was Gauff’s policy of breaking up the rallies with high topspin balls that hung in the air, devoid of pace and subject to the vagaries of a swirling wind. It was a Swiatek miss on one such ball that enabled Gauff to cancel out an early break, and it was no coincidence that 12 of the Pole’s 15 unforced errors came in the opening set, when she was still coming to terms with her opponent’s tactical curveball.
“I was surprised, because when I was playing against the wind, sometimes these forehands were just stopping, and you had to work twice to kind of get to them,” said Swiatek.
“I don’t know if that was her tactic or it just happened because of the wind. I’m happy that I managed to get the win and be aggressive anyway.”
Swiatek will need to continue in that vein against Haddad Maia, for whom it has been a Roland Garros of firsts. In her first grand slam quarter-final, the Brazilian world No 14 played her first match on Court Philippe Chatrier, defeating Jabeur to become the first Brazilian woman to reach a grand slam semi-final since Maria Bueno at the 1968 US Open. The 27-year-old will now break into the world’s top 10 for the first time.
Haddad Maia may be breaking new ground, but there was nothing new about the way she reached her latest milestone. Having recovered from match point down against Russia’s Ekaterina Alexandrova and won the longest women’s match of the season against Sara Sorribes Tormo of Spain, Haddad Maia once again came from behind to seal victory. Staring down the barrel in the 11th game of the second set, where she faced two break points that would have left Jabeur serving for the match, Haddad Maia held firm and went on to level the match on a tiebreak. The Brazilian dominated the decider.
“I think a tennis match is like a marathon, it’s not a 100-metres race,” said Haddad Maia. “I’m very patient and I never give up, so I wait for the moment because I know that my level is high.
“Even if I’m not playing well, or even if I’m missing a few shots one moment, the tennis will appear, and I’ll have my opportunity to go for it.”
Swiatek, who was defeated in her only previous meeting with Haddad Maia last year in Toronto, is alive to the threat posed by a player who feels she has “nothing to lose”.
“She’s a fighter, and she showed even today that she’s fighting until the last ball,” said Swiatek. “It pays off.”