Coco Gauff made her first Wimbledon semifinal on Tuesday, and in doing so made some history.<\/p>\n
She has now made the semifinals at all four Grand Slams, and at 22 is the youngest WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz player to accomplish that feat since Maria Sharapova in 2007. (Sharapova was just 20 when she made the French Open semis that year to complete the quartet.)<\/p>\n
A former US Open and French Open champion, Gauff made the semifinals at the Australian Open in 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Prior to the start of this tournament, she had never been past the fourth round in six Wimbledon appearances.<\/p>\n
The run to the final four has been anything but easy for the World No. 7. She’s now played four consecutive three-setters, the last two of which she came from a set down to win.<\/p>\n
After beating Jessica Pegula in the quarterfinals, she looked at her box and mouthed, “Oh my god, how?”<\/p>\n
“I didn’t think this would be the year, honestly, to be fair,” Gauff told reporters after the match. “I think maybe the biggest thing is the athletic ability that I have. I am a good mover. I think, because of that, it translates to all surfaces. That’s why I’m maybe having good results so far on all of them.”<\/p>\n
Though she’s still so young, Gauff acknowledged in her on-court interview that she’s starting to feel like a tour veteran. It was the first time, she said, that she didn’t feel the nerves playing on Centre Court.<\/p>\n
And though Wimbledon has traditionally been Gauff’s least successful major, it was here that she had her first real breakthrough. In her Grand Slam main-draw debut in 2019, a 15-year-old Gauff came through qualifying and reached the fourth round, stunning Venus Williams in the process.<\/p>\n
“I’ve been here since [I was] 15,” she said, “so I’ve had a lot more opportunities to play these tournaments than other people. It just gives me more chances, I guess, of success. So I think that’s also the main thing, having that experience early on of making a second week of a Slam, having that belief.<\/p>\n
“At 15, I was entering almost every Slam, expecting that I can make it to the quarters. I think that was also a big thing.”<\/p>\n
Gauff also became the seventh active player to complete the Grand Slam semifinal set, joining Venus Williams, Serena Williams, Karolina Pliskova, Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek.<\/p>\n
Just hours later, Karolina Muchova became the eighth after she defeated Naomi Osaka 7-6 (4), 6-4 to reach the Wimbledon semifinals.<\/p>\n
Gauff and Muchova will play on Thursday for a spot in the final. Gauff has won six of their seven career meetings, though Muchova won their most recent match, a 6-3, 5-7, 6-3 win in the Stuttgart quarterfinals in April. This will be their first match on grass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coco Gauff made her first Wimbledon semifinal on Tuesday, and in doing so made some history. She has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":529951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105,4277],"class_list":["post-529950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}