Coco Gauff began to figure it out – the ‘it’ works in multiple ways there, both in terms of how to win her quarter-final against Jessica Pegula and also how to produce her best tennis on grass – an understated American voice in the crowd began to offer the same words of encouragement over and over between points. “Right here, right now.”
They were delivered with such subtlety compared to some of the squawks you get from the crowd at Wimbledon that initially it barely registered, instead gradually sinking in with each repetition to such an extent that it began to take on a new, deeper meaning. What if, actually, right now is Gauff’s moment? The time for her to fulfil that extraordinary potential first glimpsed by everybody when she made her debut here on Centre Court at the age of 15.
Gauff’s progress to the fourth round in that first year hinted at a steep upwards trajectory culminating with her hands grasping the Venus Rosewater Dish sooner rather than later. Except Gauff had never progressed beyond the fourth round until this year and her record on grass has been, well, not good.
Going out in the first round in 2025, Gauff had not won on this surface in two years until this year’s championship. “Pretty insane” was how Gauff summed up her turnaround.
Three-set wins are becoming a regularity for her here and she was slow out of the blocks with her first serve, with back-to-back double faults leading to an opening break for Pegula who did not look back. Pegula won the first set 6-4 by patiently waiting for Gauff to make an unforced error (and there were 17 of them in the opening set).
As soon as Gauff’s serve began to click, it was a different story. Pegula had been able to dictate the tempo of their early rallies but Gauff began pinning Pegula deeper behind the baseline, and then using the net to her advantage. Gauff was ruthless on break points, taking all five that came her way, whereas Pegula often missed out. And the aces kept coming for Gauff, including one to clinch the second set 3-6.
Watching two opponents who have worked so well as a doubles partnership is always interesting, having that inner knowledge of the other’s strengths and weaknesses. Together Pegula and Gauff reached the French Open final and were once ranked number one in the world. Neither of them had made it through to the semi-finals of Wimbledon before in singles and there was no room here for any sentimentality.
Gauff ground Pegula down – the pace on her serves, the persistence of her groundstrokes. Twice Pegula left space near the back of the court for Gauff to exploit and afterwards ruefully shook her head in frustration. A match she had appeared in control of initially with Gauff struggling was now slipping away.
Slipping because, as Gauff insinuated afterwards, she was beginning to figure out how to hit the heights expected of her on this previously problematic surface. The winners increased and she was better at the net, dominating those points in the second and third sets.
“I think I’m able to relax a bit because… I just feel regardless of how the rest of this tournament goes, I really think I’ve found a bit of a breakthrough on grass,” Gauff said. Expanding on what that breakthrough actually meant she referred back to the first set, when she looked for quicker ways out of rallies or was guilty of overhitting. Instead, she began to back herself.
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“I just really honed in on my game and realised I don’t have to play a spectacular point every time to win, even though there were some spectacular points. Just trusting myself, trusting that my groundstrokes are good enough to be with anyone on this surface.”
The top seeds in the draw – Aryna Sabalenka, Elena Rybakina, Iga Świątek and now Pegula – are all gone, following Gauff’s 6-4, 3-6, 3-6 win to set up a semi-final against Karolína Muchová.
Someone out of the remaining contenders is going to win this competition for the first time. And if Gauff, now a geriatric 22 years old and also a winner of both the US and French Opens, is finally beginning to figure all of this out, then why shouldn’t she be next? What if this truly is her moment – right here, right now?
Photograph by Zuma Press / Avalon