Emma Navarro eliminates Coco Gauff at Wimbledon to make it her very first Grand Slam quarterfinal
The Charleston’s Emma Navarro advances to first Grand Slam quarterfinals at Wimbledon.
By Associated Press
Jul 07, 2024 08:25 PM
LONDON (AP) — Things were not going well for Coco Gauff against Emma Navarro at Centre Court, not well at all, and she kept looking at her guest box for help from her coaches. One, Brad Gilbert, would stand up and gesture, and they would talk back and forth, but a fix did not arrive.
Gauff hasn’t made it beyond to the final four rounds of Wimbledon She was eliminated at the same stage on Sunday, getting eliminated with Navarro the 6-4 7-6 in an all-American game.
“We had the game plan in place but I was feeling that it was not functioning. I’m not always asking for suggestions from the box, but today was one the times when I was feeling like I didn’t have any solutions,” said Gauff, the current U.S. Open champion and seeded as No. 2 at the All England Club. “Mentally it was a lot going on, and I felt like I wanted more direction.”
Hers was just the latest in a string of withdrawals from top females of the Wimbledon tournament this year: No. 1 Iga Swiatek was eliminated on Saturday, and No. 3 Aryna Sabalenka was forced to withdraw due to an injured shoulder prior to playing an opponent and No. 6 Marketa Vondrousova lost by Marketa Vondrousova in the initial round.
There are only two of the top 10 most-seeded women are still there the champions of 2022 Elena Rybakina, who’s No. 4. She is also the the recent French Open runner-up Jasmine Paolini, who is ranked No. 7 and plays Navarro in the following round. Rybakina is playing her fourth round match on Monday Paolini was able to advance on Sunday after Madison Keys stopped playing because she injured her.
Navarro demonstrated exactly the kind of tennis that she’s worthy when she played in the round two in which she defeated the four-time Major winner Naomi Osaka.
“I don’t have a ton of words,” said the 19th-ranked Navarro 23-year-old who was born on the coast of South Carolina and won an NCAA championship in Virginia.
“I played very aggressively. Coco is clearly an incredible player. I have lots of admiration for her, and what she’s accomplished at such young age is truly remarkable. I knew that she wasn’t going to be easy for me tonight.” said Navarro who made it to the quarterfinals in the Grand Slam tournament for the first time. “But I wanted to play aggressively and push back against her game and I think I was able to do that.”
Alongside her award from New York last September, Gauff 20, a 20-year old from Florida was second at the French Open and reached the semi-finals at the Australian Open.
The first big breakthrough was during the All England Club at age 15 at the time she was the youngest player to qualify for the tournament and defeated Venus Williams in the first round to advance to the fourth round, Gauff has not been able to match the result she achieved at that time.
She also lost at the fourth round in her subsequent appearance, in 2021. She then she was knocked out at the 3rd round of 2022, and in the first round just a year before that.
On Sunday, Gauff was constantly making mistakes, and finished with more than two times the number of unforced errors 25 as winnings 12, 12. Her most significant issue was the shot opponents know Gauff’s weak spot which is the forehand.
Navarro continued to strike on the opposite side, and it worked.
Gauff committed 16 unforced mistakes using forehands and 16 forced errors, which accounted for 32 out of the 61 total points scored by Navarro.
“I have the ability to raise my level when players play well, and I feel I didn’t do that today,” Gauff said.
She shared that when she’s asked for a mid-match help from her coaches, “They usually gave me something,” but she added: “Today, I don’t think we were all in sync.”
“It’s no one’s fault but me,” Gauff stated. “I’m the player out there.”
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