Coco Gauff, Jessica Pegula part of Wimbledon carnage, while Taylor Fritz survives—barely

Did you catch a familiar whiff in the air as you watched the matches from the All England Club on Tuesday? That was the scent—or at least the sensation—of carnage.

The term is trotted out when upsets begin to spread like wildfire; I’d say it’s applicable to this edition of Wimbledon so far. Thirteen of the 32 men’s seeds—including No. 3 Alexander Zverev—and 10 of the 32 women’s seeds—including No. 2 Coco Gauff, No. 3 Jessica Pegula and No. 5 Zheng Qinwen—lost in the first round.

Here’s a look at the two highest U.S. seeds who fell, and another who had to pull a Houdini act to survive.

Coco Gauff couldn’t get enough grass under feet after Roland Garros

“I’m very much someone who can look ahead very quickly,” Gauff told reporters at Wimbledon before the tournament began.

That’s key for any player who wins Roland Garros, and hopes to have a chance to do the same at Wimbledon three weeks later. The only woman in this century to complete that clay-grass double—known as the Channel Slam—is Serena Williams, in 2002 and 2015.

Gauff’s attempt ended more quickly than most. It took Dayana Yastremska just 79 minutes to send the American out in her opener, 7-6 (3), 6-1.

Gauff was 3-0 against the Ukrainian before today, but she still didn’t love seeing her name next to hers in the bracket. Two months ago on clay in Madrid, Yastremska took the first set 6-0, before Gauff worked her way back to win 7-5 in the third. If anything, Yastremska’s low-margin lasers from the baseline would make her an even harder out on grass.

“I saw the draw and knew it would be a tough match for me,” Gauff said.

It didn’t take long for her fears to be realized. Yastremska came out firing from both wings, brazenly taking the ball down the line and over the high part of the net whenever the mood struck her. Gauff made just 45 percent of her first serves, and Yastremska took advantage of the second deliveries—when Coco got them in, that is. Gauff double-faulted nine times, and made 29 errors against just six winners.

“I was on fire,” Yastremska said, showing off her flame-painted fingernails.

Gauff may have put Roland Garros behind her, but she never got Wimbledon into her sights, or enough grass under her feet. After a (deserved) post-Paris victory trip back to the States, she lost her opener at the tune-up in Berlin.

“I only hit twice before my first match,” she said of that event. “So I figured I wasn't going to do the best there. Yeah, I fell a couple times during that match. I was, like, ‘I definitely need to get on the movement.’”

When it came time to try to match Yastremska’s pace on grass, Gauff, still in clay mode, wasn’t ready to make it happen.

“I have to be able to counter that and also be as aggressive too as she is at times,” Coco said. “I think it’s just changing my playing style a little bit, which is difficult, because for me it’s like I approach clay and I play this one way for however long clay season is, six to eight weeks.”

I saw the draw and knew it would be a tough match for me. Coco Gauff on Dayana Yastremska

Looking back, she said that staying in Europe, instead of making the round trip to the States, might have been the smarter option.

“This is very much new territory. I’m trying to take it as I go,” she said. “If I were to [win Roland Garros] again…maybe I should stay on this side of the world and have fun instead of going all the way back to the U.S.

“I maybe could have used more matches. It’s like finding the puzzle.”

Jessica Pegula and her No. 3 seed reputation were no match for an attack-minded opponent

“You can just feel the urgency from this lady, can’t you?”

That’s what a commentator calling Tuesday’s first-rounder between Pegula and Elisabetta Cocciaretto said early in the opening set. If you know the final score, you know she wasn’t talking about the American.

Coming in, everything favored Pegula. She’s ranked third, 113 spots ahead of her opponent. In their only previous meeting, at Wimbledon in 2023, she won 6-4, 6-0. Three days earlier, Pegula had beaten Iga Swiatek to win the title in Bad Homburg. And it had been five years since she lost in the first round at any major.

Once upon a time, we used to call grass the great leveler. That’s not as true now that it has been slowed down and firmed up a bit, but it can still offer an opportunity for a player who’s willing to press the action and bombard her opponent with flat pace.

Unfortunately for Pegula, the 24-year-old Cocciatetto was exactly that type of opponent. From start to finish, she hugged the baseline, hit as hard and flat and deep as possible, and stormed Pegula’s middling second serves. She ended up with 17 winners to five for Pegula, and didn’t face a break point in a 6-2, 6-3 victory.

Normally, a player in Cocciaretto’s position would start to feel finish-line nerves in the second set. But that was another benefit of her upbeat, strike-first mentality: She didn’t give herself time to get nervous.

“She played absolutely, like, incredible tennis,” a stunned Pegula said. “Do I think I played the best match ever? No, but I definitely don’t think I was playing bad.”

Cocciaretto couldn’t disagree.

“I played unbelievable, I think one of the best matches that I ever played,” she said. “I was so pumped to play here, because I [missed] Wimbledon last year.”

She played absolutely, like, incredible tennis. Jessica Pegula on Elisabetta Cocciaretto

It didn’t help that Pegula’s flat, counterpunching style fed into Cocciaretto’s game, or that the American doesn’t have an unstoppable weapon of her own. It helped even less that, after serving brilliantly in Bad Homburg, she made just 52 percent of her first serves today.

Afterward, Pegula was left to smile and—like her fellow high-seeded American Gauff—wonder what the best way to get ready for grass is. Maybe, she smiled, no preparation at all is the way to go.

“I should just play no tournaments, get no wins, then roll into Wimbledon, and maybe I’ll have better results,” she said with a laugh.

Taylor Fritz took on tennis’ scoring system and—barely—emerged triumphant

Tennis fans love to extoll “the beauty of the scoring system.” You don’t just pile up points and win, the way you do, in, say, badminton or squash. With matches broken into games, sets, and—most important of all—tiebreakers, you need to win the points that mean the most. To come through in the clutch, as we say in the U.S.

It seems doubtful that Taylor Fritz was thinking many nice things about his sport’s scoring during his five-set, two-day first-round match with Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard. With a slick grass court and a roof overhead, the 6’8” Frenchman with the fireball serve was uniquely poised to exploit the scoring system for all it was worth.

For two sets on Monday, Fritz was the better player: He won more points, held serve more quickly, and had chances to win each set. But Mpetshi Perricard survived on the strength of his serve—he would finish with 37 aces and crack one 153 m.p.h—and then stole away with both tiebreakers, 8-6 and 10-8.

“I think I was in a really bad spot in that match,” Fritz said, “despite feeling like I was playing well and doing everything that I kind of wanted to do out there.”

Fritz reached his worst spot during the fourth-set tiebreaker. Down 1-5, two points from defeat, he looked sure to make his second straight first-round Slam exit. But that’s when the tennis scoring system turned in the American’s favor. Mpetshi Perricard, with the match on his racquet, tightened up. He missed an open forehand pass, sent a backhand and a volley long, and watched Fritz end a 17-shot rally with a forehand that landed on the sideline.

Fritz won 19 more points than Mpetshi Perricard in total, and never faced a break point. But he was still two points from defeat, and had to pull a Houdini act to pull out the win. When it mattered the most, though, in the fourth-set tiebreaker and the fifth set on Tuesday, he was better.

“I had to tell myself, ‘He’s going to be sleeping on what just happened in the fourth set,’” Fritz said of the overnight pep talk he gave himself before the final set. “I’m going to come back and keep doing what I was doing.”