Coco Gauff Has Become America’s Unlikely Clay-Court Star

PARIS—In putting together the deepest major tournament run of her young career, Coco Gauff has been on court for less than five hours in total. She has reached the French Open quarterfinals by powering through three victories and a walkover. And by now, she has spent more time in Paris engaged in daily games of UNO with her parents than playing in tennis matches.

To Gauff, it’s a sure sign of one thing: at 17, she’s beginning to feel like a professional. Her results in Paris have all been “straightforward wins, like no crazy three sets and stuff,” she said. “As we know, I have had a lot of those in the past.”

Nearly half of Gauff’s 16 matches in the main draws of major tournaments before this French Open have gone the distance and exposed her inexperience. In her most recent trip to a major-tournament fourth round—at the Australian Open in 2020—Gauff took the first set against fellow American Sofia Kenin, only to lose the next two 6-3 and 6-0 and walk off in tears.

Two years later, Gauff is already showing signs of becoming more clinical. All three of her wins here have come in straight sets.

“I think that you can tell that I’m improving and making smarter decisions on the court,” she said.

Reminders of just how young Gauff is—even by tennis standards—are everywhere. She won the junior French Open just three years ago. She posts on TikTok most days. And her doubles partner here, Venus Williams, had won four of her seven major titles before Gauff was born. 

That the breakthrough should come in Paris seems all the more unlikely for the young American, until you remember that her game took on a European accent early on. Though Gauff grew up between Atlanta and Delray Beach, Fla., she began traveling to the South of France to play at an academy run by Patrick Mouratoglou, who has been working with Serena Williams for nearly a decade.

It was there that Gauff discovered she had a particular gift for clay—even if she lists it as her third favorite surface behind hard courts and grass. She was a clay-court national champion at the under-12 level and soon began turning heads at the Roland-Garros junior tournament. Her easy movement and complete court-coverage mean that she can hang in the longer points when she isn’t pummeling opponents with her serve.

“It just gives me a familiar vibe, something that maybe other American players don’t have,” she said. “Because in the U.S. we don’t really have red clay…I just feel comfortable with it.”

Gauff’s emergence here couldn’t be timed any better. The French Open women’s draw this spring has turned into a 14-day battle of attrition. 

The first week alone claimed three of the biggest names in the tournament. First Naomi Osaka, who had won the past two majors, pulled out, citing concerns over her mental health. Then world No. 1 and 2019 French Open champion Ashleigh Barty abandoned her second-round match due to a lingering issue with her left hip. And Serena Williams’s quest for a 24th major title came to an abrupt end on Sunday with a defeat in the fourth round. 

Iga Swiatek is the defending French Open champion. Photo: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images

Of the eight women who advanced to the quarterfinals, only 20-year-old Iga Swiatek of Poland had won a Grand Slam tournament before—and that was only eight months ago at the rescheduled French Open. On Tuesday, the two players who punched their tickets to their first major semis were Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, seeded No. 31 here, and the unseeded Tamara Zidansek, a onetime junior snowboarding champion who switched to tennis.

“Once you get to this stage, it’s all about the mental game,” Zidansek said. “It’s about believing that you can go out there. It’s not like you can hit the ball harder or, you know, that you can run faster.”

Gauff, who has worked on controlling her focus in big matches, has reached the same conclusion. Her victory in the fourth round came with precisely zero double faults. Now, she will play her first ever major quarterfinal against Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic, ranked no. 33 in the world and fresh off a clay-court tournament win in Strasbourg. A potential semifinal against Swiatek or Maria Sakkari of Greece, one of the French Open’s in-form players, awaits after that.

“Right now I’m focused on going to sleep tonight and winning the next UNO match,” Gauff said on Monday. “And then tomorrow we focus back on practice and then get ready for the quarterfinals.”

Write to Joshua Robinson at Joshua.Robinson@wsj.com

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Appeared in the June 9, 2021, print edition as ‘America’s Unlikely Clay-Court Star.’