Coco Gauff’s win over Ajla Tomljanovic was always in doubt, but she delivered when it mattered

NEW YORK—Coco Gauff was serving for the match against Ajla Tomljanovic. The score was 6-5 in the third set, 30-30. Gauff missed her first serve. As she tossed the ball for her second, you could feel the entirety of Arthur Ashe Stadium stop breathing at once.

This was the moment of truth. Gauff’s serve had been the most discussed and dissected shot of the week leading up to the US Open. Arm angles, elbow heights, toss placements: We had heard about them all. She had even hired a coach specifically for the shot, and even more specifically to keep her from double faulting matches away.

After nearly three hours, Gauff’s serve hadn’t cost her this match—yet. Yes, she had double faulted 10 times, including twice when she had served for the win at 5-4 a few minutes earlier. But she had also made 60 percent of her first serves and won two-thirds of those points—progress in Gauff’s world at the moment. But if her toss was going to be wayward, and her elbow too low, now was when it was going to happen.

But it didn’t. Gauff tossed the ball, and hit it in. Granted, the ball didn’t have a ton of pace on it, and it didn’t land in one of the corners. But it went in. And it came with a very important bonus: Tomljanovic rushed forward to try to crush forehand—and sent it long instead. Gauff let out her loudest “Come on!” of the night, and the crowd exhaled into its biggest roar of the night. Coco had match point.

“It’s been really tough,” Gauff said of the turbo-renovations she’s been trying to make to her serve. “Mentally exhausting, but I’m trying.”

At 30-30, it came in when it mattered. Coco Gauff

Gauff’s 6-3, 6-7 (2), 7-5 win was surely exhausting to play; it lasted two hours and 57 minutes and featured dozens of lung-busting, rapid-fire rallies between the two women. Tomljanovic, who found her timing late in the second set, fired ball after ball at Gauff’s defenses. The American, her body stretched to the limit on many of her shots, never stopped running them down.

“I was trying to push her back, and she was standing on top of the baseline,” Gauff said.

For fans, it was equally exhausting trying to keep track of who had the momentum, and who looked like she might prevail. There were stretches when Tomljanovic couldn’t miss, and it looked like she would eventually overpower Gauff. Then there were stretches when Ajla went off again, and Coco took over. In the second set, Gauff came within two points of the win. In the third, she had multiple opportunities to go up two breaks, but Tomljanovic hung on each time.

“I had chances for it to be straight sets, but Ajla was tough,” Gauff said. “I had chances to go up double break so many times, I was just, like, eventually one of these is going to go my way.”

In the end, the stats weren’t pretty. Tomljanovic hit 12 winners and made 56 errors; Gauff hit 29 winners and made 59 errors. Between them, they committed 17 double faults and dropped serve 14 times.

But those numbers don’t do justice to the excitement of the rallies, the pace of Tomljanovic’s flat ground strokes, the speed, athleticism, and—most important—stubborn competitiveness of Gauff. The latter was surely buoyed by the 100 percent pro-Coco crowd.

“It wasn’t the best, but I’m happy to get through to the next round,” she said.

Despite Coco’s words, she did raise her game when it mattered. At 30-30 in the final game, she made that pressure-filled second serve. Then, at match point, she bolted left and tried a down-the-line backhand pass. Two years ago on this court, she made that same shot to clinch her first Grand Slam title. This time her backhand was pure again.

It was a first-round win rather than a final, but as Coco says, she’s happy to move on, and get another chance to serve again.