Coco Gauff scraped into the Wimbledon third round on Wednesday as the seventh seed avoided becoming the latest high-profile name to tumble out of contention, fighting back from two points from defeat against tricky Argentine Solana Sierra to progress 6-3 3-6 7-6(7).
Like defending champion Iga Swiatek on Tuesday, Gauff was less than convincing and occasionally wobbly on serve. But she raised her game when she needed to, aided by Sierra cracking in the closing stages, to book her place in the next round.
“I was just happy and proud of myself,” she said on court. “Solana played a great match and was hitting some big shots, so I felt like a lot of the time I was on the defensive, but overall just happy with my serve. It held up the whole match and helped me in the tie-breaker.”
At the very least she has avoided the opening-round exit she suffered in 2023 and 2025, although she still looks uncomfortable on the grass – despite Wimbledon being the place of her breakthrough as a precocious 15-year-old in 2019, it is her worst of the four slams.
Sierra reached the last-16 last season as a lucky loser but is still getting accustomed to the biggest stages, evidenced by her forgetting that the players had to change ends as she led 7-5 in the match tiebreak.
After dropping the first set Sierra began to assert herself, capitalising on a string of errors to force a decider, where both players struggled on serve as the nerves set in – the Argentine hit nine double faults over the course of the match to Gauff’s five.
The American’s wayward serve was at its worst as she hit a double fault onto the umpire’s chair, and she averaged just 54 per cent of first serves in. But a 124mph ace dug her out of trouble at 1-1 in the decider and a brilliant second serve ace, at 0-40 down at 3-3, provided a glimmer of hope.
But Sierra, the world No 56, put herself in control of the baseline exchanges, pinning Gauff deep in the court, and broke. But from 5-3 up Sierra fell apart, double faulting as she served for the match at 5-4, and from two points from victory, suddenly it was level.
Now on the back foot, Sierra double faulted again as she served to stay in the match at 6-5, but regrouped and initially pulled ahead in the tie-break. Two errors which just missed the lines, having led 7-5 in the breaker, set up a nervous end to what had been an incredibly nervy match.
The crucial shot came just then: at 7-7, the American played a beautiful drop shot to draw Sierra in, which the Argentine landed right on the baseline, sending Gauff pinwheeling back to recover it. Gauff planted a backhand volley deep beyond her in the open court and roared to the crowd: that strike put her ahead in the breaker for the first time, and she punished Sierra, drawing a forehand error from her before landing her 10th ace down the T.
Gauff said: “At Roland Garros I was two points away from winning at one point, so… For me, I was just thinking about, Okay, I can definitely turn this around. I felt like I was having a lot of chances in the break opportunities. I just wasn’t quite converting them. I was just keeping the faith that eventually I’ll get my one break. Once I got that, I was able to relax.”
Asked how she fought back in the final set, Gauff said: “My coach always tells me ‘remember who you are’ and I think I have a high break percentage most times so when she served for the match I just reminded myself I’m a great returner as well.
“And I knew when I served, I think I saw my stats after the first or second set, I was like 92 per cent first serves won, so I was just trying to be aggressive with my first serve and my second serves were good too.
“I was relaxed even though I was nervous for most points in the match, I was just trying to be positive and I think that showed.”
