Caroline Garcia ends Coco Gauff's run and reaches U.S. Open semifinals
Caroline Garcia reacts after she won her match against Coco Gauff during the women's singles quarterfinals at the 2022 U.S. Open at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center on Tuesday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Caroline Garcia has lived a perhaps tamer version of where Coco Gauff is now.
It was 2011 and she was just 17 years old when Andy Murray saw her face Maria Sharapova at the French Open, deeming her a future world No. 1. The pressure, she said, was nearly unbearable, as she was only ranked 188 at the time. She only ever made it as high as No. 4, and that took seven more years.
For Gauff, the American who lost to Garcia Tuesday night in the U.S. Open quarterfinals, some of the details are similar: At 18, she’s being eyed as the future of tennis, there seems to be no stopping her eventual ascent, and, maybe unlike Garcia at the time, she seems primed to dominate the biggest stage.
Not quite yet, though.
Garcia, who said she finally sees with clarity the path she couldn’t forge back when she was 17, defeated the 12-seeded Gauff, 6-3, 6-4, at Arthur Ashe Stadium Tuesday — setting up a meeting with Garcia’s old junior’s nemesis, No. 5 Ons Jabeur, on Friday.
The Frenchwoman, seeded 17, has has been scorching hot, winning 13 straight matches, along with 13 straight sets, and displaying an aggressive, powerful game that she now realizes she must embrace.
“The path is very clear right now, which direction I have to go, under stress, under pressure,” Garcia said. “I’ve always been very aggressive . . . But [when] I was younger, sometimes, I didn’t [know] which direction I have to go, in which way my game is the best, and to accept that it’s actually the only way.”
Gauff, who played Garcia twice before and won both, certainly noticed the shift.
“You’re playing someone off the bat, they’re standing on top of the baseline and ripping balls, it’s not easy,” Gauff said. “She has the type of game that you kind of have to adjust to because I feel like it’s not hit-or-miss because she definitely makes more, but you’re hitting a good serve, and sometimes you’re not expecting the ball to come back as fast and as deep as she was hitting it. I think it’s really about her level of play.”
That was enough to upend Gauff, who hung in but struggled on second serves and committed six double faults, despite having the pro-American crowd firmly behind her. It was the first time Gauff had dropped a set all tournament.
Garcia won the first four games of the first set — capped by a Game 4 where Gauff double-faulted twice and finished with an unforced error to essentially gift Garcia three points in the frame. Gauff ended up taking the next three games, drawing to within 5-3, but Garcia rallied to finally take the set.
Garcia won the first two games of the second set before eventually allowing Gauff to draw to within 5-4. Garcia, though, finished it off, earning match point on Gauff’s backhand unforced error.
And that probably has plenty to do with Garcia accepting how to best play her game: with power, with emotion, getting more inside the court on the return, playing balls early. It also has to do with maturity, and what she went through at 17.
“It was tough because people were expecting a lot,” she said. “But the game, I was not ready for any of that. It took me some time to come step-by-step to the top.”
It taught her a lesson, though. When the crowd was against her, it didn’t quite matter. When Gauff charged back, she allowed herself to feel her emotions, but she didn’t allow them to dominate her.
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.
