PARIS — Coco Gauff kept producing double-fault serves. She kept missing plenty of other strokes. She kept losing games in bunches. And all the while, she would let out a sigh, bow her head or otherwise look generally uncomfortable.
What the 21-year-old never did Wednesday during a tense and topsy-turvy French Open quarterfinal against 30-year-old Madison Keys — a matchup of two Americans who each owns a Grand Slam singles title — was give up hope or go away. And in a contest filled with plenty of mistakes, it was Gauff who emerged to grab eight of the last nine games for a 6-7 (6), 6-4, 6-1 victory and a third trip to the semifinals at Roland-Garros.
“I have had that in me from a young age,” said the second-seeded Gauff, who won the 2023 U.S. Open as a teenager and was the French Open runner-up the year before. “When times become more difficult, knowing that I can dig deep in those tough moments.”
Where did that come from?
“Just a love to win, the will to win. It’s not something that’s taught or anything. It’s just I have always had that in me, and not just in tennis but in everything. I’m a very competitive person,” said Gauff, an Atlanta native who has hailed from Florida since her family moved there when she was in elementary school. “My philosophy is if I can just leave it all out there, then the loss will hurt a lot less than regrets of maybe not giving it your all.”