Coco Gauff arrives at Roland Garros as the defending champion, and her opening match is a tricky one: Taylor Townsend in the first round of the French Open. The 22-year-old American came into Friday’s news conference talking less about the draw than about the strain that has built around her game and her expectations.
Gauff said she hit herself on the head with her racket during the Italian Open final against Elina Svitolina two Sundays ago, but the blow did not hurt. “It didn’t hurt,” she said, adding, “I had big braids.”
The moment was a reminder of how far her emotions have sometimes spilled in public this season. Cameras also caught Gauff smashing her racket to bits underneath the stadium after her quarterfinal loss to Svitolina at the Australian Open, another match that ended with visible frustration. Since January, she has reached two WTA 1000 finals and lost both in three hard-fought sets, a run that shows how close she has been to another major title without finding the finish.
That tension sits beside the rest of her season. Gauff is already a two-time Grand Slam champion and, according to Sportico, was the highest-paid female athlete last year at $31 million in prize money and sponsorships. But she said the work behind the scenes has mattered more than the numbers. “I have a therapist that I have been going to for a long time, and also, just journaling,” she said.
She also described the internal standard she keeps chasing on court. “When I’m playing the matches, I just want to win literally every point in the most perfect way. Obviously, it just doesn’t always happen for me like that all the time,” she said. That kind of perfectionism has become more visible as she has dealt with off-court difficulties while remaking her serve and forehand, and as her frustration on court has seemed sharper than earlier in her career.
Gauff said the challenge now is to stop staring too far ahead and keep her attention on the process. “I think I can see where I want to be, and I want to be there so bad. But I’m just trying now to focus on the process: The ups and downs of the journey of tennis. It’s something that I can hone in on and do well at times, and other times I cannot do so well,” she said.
That is the backdrop for her return to Paris, where the defending champion begins again with Townsend across the net and the same question hanging over the rest of her tournament: whether she can turn all that pressure into something steadier, and finally carry it deep enough to defend the title she brought to Roland Garros a year ago.
