PARIS (AP) — Coco Gauff kept double-faulting. She kept missing plenty of other strokes. She kept losing games in bunches. And all the while, she would let out a sigh or bow her head or look generally uncomfortable.
What the 21-year-old Gauff never did Wednesday during a tense and topsy-turvy French Open quarterfinal against another American woman with a Grand Slam title, Madison Keys, was give up hope or go away. And, in a contest filled with plenty of mistakes, it was Gauff who emerged to grab eight of the last nine games for a 6-7 (6), 6-4, 6-1 victory over Keys and a third trip to the semifinals at Roland-Garros.
“I have had that in me from a young age,” said the No. 2-seeded Gauff, who won the 2023 U.S. Open as a teenager and was the French Open runner-up the year before. “When times become more difficult, knowing that I can dig deep in those tough moments.”
Where did that come from?
“Just a love to win, the will to win. It’s not something that’s taught or anything. It’s just I have always had that in me, and not just in tennis but in everything. I’m a very competitive person,” she said. “My philosophy is if I can just leave it all out there, then the loss will hurt a lot less than regrets of maybe not giving it your all.”
Gauff needed to overcame 10 double-faults — three in the opening tiebreaker alone — and the first set she’s dropped in the tournament, as well as deal with the big-hitting Keys, the No. 7 seed, who entered with an 11-match Grand Slam winning streak after her title at the Australian Open in January.
They combined for 101 unforced errors and just 40 winners across more than two hours under a closed roof at Court Philippe-Chatrier on a drizzly, chilly day.
Nearly half of the games — 14 of 29 — featured breaks of serve. But from 4-all in the second set, Gauff held four times in a row while pulling away. She made two unforced errors in the last set, including just one double-fault.
After falling behind 4-1 at the start, and twice being a single point from trailing 5-1, Gauff switched to a racket with a different tension in the strings to see if that would help.
“Maybe it did, and maybe it didn’t. I’d like to think that it helped a little bit,” she said. “Sometimes that stuff could just be mental. Maybe you’re thinking, ‘Oh, I changed my racket, I’m going to play better, and you start doing it. I don’t know.”
She’ll play Thursday for a berth in another major final, facing 361st-ranked French wild-card entry Loïs Boisson, who is on one of the most stunning runs in tennis history. Boisson beat No. 6 Mirra Andreeva 7-6 (6), 6-3 in the quarterfinals to follow up her upset of No. 3 Jessica Pegula in the fourth round.
Boisson, 22, is the first woman to reach the semifinals in her Grand Slam debut since 1989, when Monica Seles and Jennifer Capriati both did it at the French Open. A crowd that offered support to Gauff against Keys via shouts of “Allez, Coco!” was raucous as can be behind Boisson, rattling the 18-year-old Andreeva.
The other women’s semifinal is quite a matchup: three-time defending champion Iga Swiatek vs. No. 1-ranked Aryna Sabalenka. They advanced with quarterfinal victories Tuesday.
It was Swiatek who stopped Gauff at Roland-Garros in the semifinals last year and in the final three years ago.
“I have a lot more work left to do,” said Gauff, who raised her arms overhead then spread them wide apart after the last point against Keys, “but I’m going to savor this one today.”
Repeatedly, Gauff scrambled this way or that to get her racket on a shot from Keys and send it back, often leading to a miss.
“The court being a little bit slower, coupled with the fact that she covers the court so well, just put a little bit of pressure on me to go a little bit more for my shots and maybe press a little bit too much, too soon,” said Keys, who occasionally admonished herself with a slap on her right leg.
“There were a lot of points where I felt like, playing someone else,” Keys said, “I would have won the point.”
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