{"id":96274,"date":"2025-08-27T12:20:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T12:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/96274\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T12:20:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T12:20:08","slug":"coco-gauff-claims-mentally-exhausting-us-open-first-round-win-over-ajla-tomljanovic-naomi-osaka-overcomes-greet-minnen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/96274\/","title":{"rendered":"Coco Gauff claims \u2018mentally exhausting\u2019 US Open first round win over Ajla Tomljanovic, Naomi Osaka overcomes Greet Minnen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Coco Gauff<\/a> came through a gruelling three-setter against Ajla Tomljanovic to reach the second round of the US Open<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 2023 champion went through the mire against the Australian, ultimately winning 6-4 6-7 (2) 7-5 in a three-hour slugfest.<\/p>\n

Gauff made a total of 10 double faults and was left to rue several missed opportunities before eventually getting the job done.<\/p>\n

She said: “Yeah, it was a tough match. I had chances for it to be straight sets. Ajla was tough. It wasn\u2019t the best, but I\u2019m happy to get through to the next round.”<\/p>\n

“I had so many chances and [I knew] eventually it was going to come. I had chances to close out in two, I had chances to go up a double break so many times, so yeah I was just like \u2018eventually one of these are going to go my way and it ended up happening.”<\/p>\n

It has been a tumultuous build-up to Gauff’s home Grand Slam, shaking up her coaching team with the arrival of Gavin MacMillan in a bid to fix some serving issues.<\/p>\n

Speaking about the upheaval, she added: “Honestly, it’s been really tough, mentally exhausting. But I’m trying. It wasn’t the best today, but it was an improvement on last week [in Cincinnati]; I’m just trying to improve with each match.”<\/p>\n

Gauff knew she was in for a real battle after Tomljanovic broke her in the opening game and raced into a 3-1 lead.<\/p>\n

The American brought the match back on serve at 3-3, before moving a break up to take the opener at 6-4.<\/p>\n

This topsy-turvy match took plenty of twists in the second set, with a break of serve for both players inside the opening three games.<\/p>\n

Tomljanovic squandered two set points at 5-4, before being broken for a third time in a second set that went to a tie-break.<\/p>\n

The world No. 79 convincingly prevailed 7-2 to set up a decider, which provided even more drama before Gauff eventually came through.<\/p>\n

Gauff shaded the early exchanges of a break-heavy third set, and it looked like she had pulled clear at 5-4 and serving for the match.<\/p>\n

But after two consecutive double faults, she was broken again at 5-5 – before swiftly restoring her advantage and holding her serve to clinch the decider.<\/p>\n

Osaka progresses past Minnen<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Naomi Osaka managed to find her way past Greet Minnen in straight sets, with a 6-3 6-4 win.<\/p>\n

Osaka took a mere one hour and 24 minutes to book her place in round two, with what was her 50th women’s singles match victory at a hard-court Grand Slam.<\/p>\n

The four-time major winner has now won 10 of her last 13 matches, following on her run to the Canadian Open final.<\/p>\n

Despite the convincing nature of the win, Osaka admits there was still room for improvement.<\/p>\n

She said: “I think, honestly, I could have had a better attitude. Like, I was just very stressed. It was the first round, and this tournament means a lot to me. I really wanted to win.<\/p>\n

“I wish I thought more about the process rather than the result, but I’m glad I was able to win.”<\/p>\n

Minnen was determined not to make things easy for the former world No. 1, breaking back at 2-2 in the opener, but it was relatively plain sailing for Osaka from that point onwards.<\/p>\n

She broke the Belgian twice more to take the opener 6-3, and claimed an early break to move 2-0 up in the second.<\/p>\n

Minnen then broke back after a mammoth third game that went to deuce six times, but Osaka managed to get the job done in two sets.<\/p>\n

She took two more breaks and wrapped up the second set 6-4 to set up a clash with American Hailey Baptiste in the next round.<\/p>\n

Watch and stream top tennis action live and on demand on TNT Sports and discovery+<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coco Gauff came through a gruelling three-setter against Ajla Tomljanovic to reach the second round of the US…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[7510,6564,101,118,56,54,55,6545,25775],"class_list":{"0":"post-96274","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-coco-gauff","9":"tag-naomi-osaka","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom","15":"tag-us-open","16":"tag-us-open-women"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}