Coco Gauff Opens Up On Dealing With the Pressure of Being Roland Garros Champion

Coco Gauff will head into the Italian Open with one eye on Roland Garros. The American star won the clay-court Grand Slam last year, so she will aim to defend it this season. But she has already prepared herself in a way that the weight of being the reigning champion doesn’t add much pressure on her.

Gauff defeated Aryna Sabalenka in the final of the Roland Garros last year, coming from a set down to claim her second career Grand Slam. However, since claiming the championship, she has won just one tournament, the Wuhan Open last October. This season, she’s yet to win a title.

She has been largely inconsistent on the court, with her performance not being up to par with her standard display. She has had to dig deep in several matches against the lowest-ranked players, ties that she easily won last year. Also, she has struggled to beat players in the top 10. In fact, her only top 10 win this season was against Belinda Bencic in Miami.

Recently, even her fellow compatriot and former ATP Player Sam Querrey admitted that she’s not the favorite to win the French Open because of her poor displays this year. At the Madrid Open last week, she crashed out in the fourth round after losing to Linda Noskova, two days after struggling with a stomach-turning illness.

Gauff is at the Italian Open, a tournament she reached the final of last year. Should she fail to reach the final next week or win the championship, the pressure on her will increase heading into Roland Garros. During her media interview in Rome, she admitted that she tries not to think too much about defending Grand Slams, as every year comes with new opportunities:

Yes, especially internally. I suppose technically, what’s at stake is the same. I’ve realized that defending the title doesn’t mean anything in a way. It’s like every year is a new opportunity for anyone to win. Obviously, I hope it’s me, but I don’t see it as defending the title anymore. I guess at the US Open I thought: I have to defend, defend, defend… Now I see it as just another tournament. I won it last year, and I’ll try to do it again this year.

Gauff reached the final of the Italian Open last year before losing to home favorite Jasmine Paolini in straight sets. It was her second consecutive clay final. The former US Open champion reached her third consecutive final at the French Open, which she won. This season, she has reached only the Miami Open final.

Coco Gauff reveals her hardest surface on tour

Coco Gauff has a good record on clay. She holds a 74 percent winning rate on the surface and last year finished the clay-court swing with a mind-blowing 18-3 win-loss record. However, she has often complained about her relationship with the red dirt, stressing that it has its ups and downs.

The clay court is her second-favorite surface, after the hard court. But most of her troubles on tour have come on the grass court. Her best run at the Wimbledon Championships is a round-of-16 finish in 2019, 2021, and 2024. Speaking in the aforementioned press conference, she noted that the grass court is her most frustrating surface on tour:

Well, I guess for me the hardest has always been grass. I just think there’s no one can really build momentum on grass. If you do well slowly, you’re playing the week before, and you win that tournament, but then you’re playing the first round of your Grand Slam two days later, which is tough, and so I think grass is the hardest.

Last year, Gauff finished the grass-court season without a win on the surface. She crashed out in the second round of the Grass Court Championship in Berlin. In Wimbledon, she fell to Dayana Yastremska in straight sets in the opening round, which was the biggest upset of the tournament.

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