Post-Match: Aryna Sabalenka vs Coco Gauff
Roland Garros tennis analysis
Aryna Sabalenka and Coco Gauff are, currently, the two best tennis players on the WTA Tour. It makes perfect sense, then, that they were the two participants in this year’s Roland Garros final. But what’s interesting about Sabalenka and Gauff is that a match between them doesn’t feel like a standard match between the World #1 and World #2. It isn’t full of graceful winners and clean rallies. It’s gritty, messy, unclean.
Gauff’s former coach, Brad Gilbert, coined the term “winning ugly” and there is no better way than that to describe matches between the two of them. While there are occasional flashes of brilliance and reminders why these two women are ranked so high, their matches run rampant with errors, breaks, and double faults (which both players have been known to struggle with at different points in their career). In the Roland Garros final, Gauff hit eight double faults and thirty unforced errors, while Sabalenka hit six double faults and a whopping seventy unforced errors. The match was frustrating for both players, and ultimately Gauff managed to secure the win 6-7 6-2 6-4.
It’s eerily reminiscent of their US Open final in 2023, which Gauff won 2-6 6-3 6-2. In both of these Grand Slam finals, Sabalenka has taken an early, dominant lead, but Gauff has come back to win.
These matches come down to mentality. Sabalenka reacted visibly to every single one of her unforced errors, often having words with her box. Gauff, of course, wasn’t happy with her mistakes either but wasn’t nearly as vocal about it. Sabalenka’s frustration seemed to only produce more errors, while Gauff managed to compartmentalize and move on.
It is worth noting that no one can force an error quite like Coco Gauff. She gets to every ball, one of the fastest players in tennis right now along with Jasmine Paolini and Alex de Minaur. Her speed is one of her quiet strengths, much like her mental fortitude. Gauff doesn’t ace her opponents off the court or out-hit them in forehand rallies—she gets every ball back over the net until her opponent just can’t handle her defense anymore. It’s grueling, tough, and yes, oftentimes “ugly”, but it works for Gauff and it drew seventy unforced errors out of Sabalenka. Gauff is also an exception to the widely accepted idea that American tennis players are incompetent on clay. In fact, she’s the exact opposite. For three years, the only person who had beaten Gauff was the eventual four-time (and counting) champion, Iga Świątek. This year, Gauff made the final of both Madrid and Rome, the two big lead-in tournaments to Roland Garros. Though she was the underdog by seeding in this final, her clay court prowess was another advantage she had on the court—and another way in which she was underestimated, as she always is.
In tennis, there’s a rampant need to find a new Big 3, now that Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have retired and Novak Djokovic makes a habit of losing early in most tournaments. For a while, that attention was on Sabalenka, Świątek, and Elena Rybakina, despite Gauff being just as accomplished and highly ranked. That narrative has been weakening for some time now, but with this win, Gauff has truly laid it to rest and proved that she deserves to be in that conversation. And that, really, is what this win means, more than just a second Grand Slam title. It’s a reminder that she is one of the best in the world, no matter what the media or fans or even her fellow players say about her.
And, in all likelihood, she’s only going to get better.