Jasmine Paolini Strongly Responds to Ex-ATP Pro Calling Coco Gauff ‘Laboratory-Made’ Player After Italian Open Defeat
Jasmine Paolini tied her head-to-head record over Coco Gauff to 2-2 after breezing past her in the Italian Open final.
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Coco Gauff, Jasmine Paolini (Image via X, The Tennis Letter)
Former ATP player Adriano Panatta harshly criticized Coco Gauff after her defeat in the Italian Open final to Jasmine Paolini. As per Panatta, Gauff knows only how to play on hard courts and hits shots “without thinking“.
Panatta felt the match that Gauff lost with a 6-4, 6-2 scoreline, was “deadly boring“, telling the American to play only on the hard courts and not sign up for the clay-court tournaments. When Paolini was asked to make her feelings known in Panatta’s comments, she made it clear that she disagreed with his views. At the press conference after her doubles victory with Sara Errani, Paolini said:
Gauff is 21 years old and has already won a Grand Slam. I don’t think there’s much to criticize. She’s a great athlete, very influential in our sport. She only brings positive things to tennis. As for women’s tennis, I’m part of it and I try to do my best, hoping that people appreciate it.
Gauff lifted the Grand Slam title at the 2023 US Open. Before that, she made it to the French Open final in 2022 but was no match for World No.5 Iga Swiatek. Last year, she and Katerina Siniakova beat Paolini and Errani to win the French Open in doubles.
Gauff has played two consecutive finals on clay this season as before the Rome Open, she also progressed to the championship match at the Madrid Open and failed to go past World No.1 Aryna Sabalenka. After her performance in the two WTA 1000 clay-court events, Gauff definitely will enter the Roland Garros as one of the contenders.
Coco Gauff lauds Jasmine Paolini for improving her game
After her defeat, when Coco Gauff was asked about the Italian players, she lauded both Jasmine Paolini and Jannik Sinner for developing their games. The 21-year-old discussed the role the crowd plays during the match, saying she knows how crowd support motivates the players to produce better results. She said:
I played her a long time ago in Adelaide. I remember her playing a little bit more of a passive game style. Now she’s more aggressive. I think just developing their games and things like that. Yeah, obviously Jannik, he’s one of those talents that I think you just knew he was going to be great since he was young.
While Paolini became the first woman to win the home tournament in the Open Era, Sinner was unsuccessful in defeating Carlos Alcaraz in the final. They played a tough first set, but Sinner faltered in the second set and eventually lost the match with a 7-5(5), 6-1 scoreline, registering his fourth consecutive defeat to the four-time Grand Slam champion.
It was Sinner’s first tournament since the three-month doping ban. Alcaraz ended his 26-match winning streak and also his streak of 24-straight set wins over the top 10 players. The match was their 20th tour-level final and their first in Rome. Alcaraz has now become the ATP player with the most titles (three) as prior to Rome, he lifted the Monte Carlo Masters and the Rotterdam Open.
These players will now shift their focus onto the French Open, which starts on May 25. Sinner was scheduled to play the Hamburg European Open but he has now pulled out of the tournament. Last year, he produced his best performance in the event as he reached the semifinal and lost to eventual winner Alcaraz.
Paolini, on the other hand, was no match for Iga Swiatek in the final. It was her first Grand Slam final. A month later, she lost the Wimbledon final to Barbora Krejcikova. Gauff was defeated in the semifinal of the clay-court Major by Swiatek.
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