PARIS — Coco Gauff is 2-0 up to now on the Paris Olympics after including a 6-3, 6-0 singles victory over Australia’s Ajla Tomljanovic on Sunday to a win a day earlier in doubles alongside Jessica Pegula.
Gauff is also entered in blended doubles with Taylor Fritz, which implies there may very well be a whole lot of matches left to play on the 20-year-old American’s Summer season Video games debut. At the least she hopes so.
“Folks within the (athletes) village are asking: ‘Oh, what number of do you could win?'” mentioned Gauff, who’s making her Olympic debut after testing optimistic for COVID-19 proper earlier than she was speculated to fly to the Tokyo Video games three years in the past. “I am like, ‘I do not know. I am in three occasions, and I wish to win all of them.'”
For the document: It will take 15 victories — six in singles, 5 in girls’s doubles and 4 in blended doubles — to gather a trio of tennis gold medals. Nobody has managed to do this since tennis returned to the Olympics in 1988.
Gauff, who joined LeBron James as a flag bearer on the opening ceremony Friday night time, took her newest step fairly rapidly, needing simply 58 minutes to compile a 17-4 edge in winners in opposition to Tomljanovic, who beat Serena Williams on the 2022 US Open within the final match of the 23-time main champ’s profession.
When it ended, Gauff waved to the group, then moved her braids away from her again and pointed towards the white “USA” letters printed on her blue uniform.
“I am not going to lie: I used to be extra nervous in doubles than singles. I do not know why. I believe it is simply because it was the primary match,” the No. 2-ranked Gauff mentioned. “And I believe whenever you begin off a match with a win, particularly one like this, it simply offers you extra confidence.”
Subsequent up for the reigning champion on the US Open in singles and the French Open in doubles is a second-round singles match Monday in opposition to Maria Lourdes Carle of Argentina.
Different winners within the Olympics singles girls’s bracket Sunday included Gauff’s American teammates Pegula, Emma Navarro and Danielle Collins, Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic, Wimbledon runner-up Donna Vekic of Croatia, 2019 US Open champion Bianca Andreescu of Canada, 2021 US Open runner-up Leylah Fernandez of Canada, and No. 7 seed Maria Sakkari of Greece.
One seeded girl who misplaced was No. 10 Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia, eradicated 6-4, 6-3 by Maria Camila Osorio of Colombia. Ostapenko received the 2017 French Open, the Grand Slam match contested on the identical Roland Garros used for these Olympics.
