Coco Gauff plays anti-grass tennis at Wimbledon to nullify Jessica Pegula for semifinal debut

THE ALL ENGLAND CLUB, London — Coco Gauff is happening at Wimbledon, and she is doing it her way.

Gauff, the two-time Grand Slam champion with designs on winning many more, toppled Jessica Pegula 4-6, 6-3, 6-3 on Centre Court Tuesday, and after three matches in which she showed how she has adapted to the grass under her feet, she won another way — by playing anti-grass.

Gauff, 22, arrived at Wimbledon without a grass-court win in two years. This was her first Wimbledon quarterfinal. But on a day when Pegula, 32, who has a history of winning on faster, slicker grass in Europe, figured to be the favorite, Gauff instead dragged her into a loopier, deeper and scratchier kind of match, breaking the rhythm of her fellow American.

There were some lawn tennis classics in Gauff’s arsenal. Her first serve fired, scorching through the court on a hot summer’s day. She played the net points better and more creatively than Pegula. She served-and-volley five times, something she rarely does, and found success on the play three times, as well as showing an improved feel for the footwork grass requires, which runs counter to her innate foot speed and athleticism.

She also stayed low to the grand, nearly scraping her back knee on the dirt behind the baseline on some of her forehands. She pushed through the ball, swinging as much from her thighs as with her arm. That all goes a long way on a surface that is all about balance.

But the core of the victory was earned behind the baseline, with high, heavy forehands and flatter backhands, keeping Pegula’s toes off the whitewash and forcing her to take a backward step, where the ball would rise out of her strike zone, on just about every point.

In this way, Gauff has evolved over the past week into a legitimate contender for a title, precisely because she has figured out when she needs to play against the grass, as well as how to embrace it. Two weeks ago, that felt close to impossible.

When Pegula’s last backhand dumped into the net, Gauff turned to her box and said. “Oh my god, how?”

She’s still not completely sure. In her on-court interview, she described her fifth consecutive win on grass as “pretty insane, considering I hadn’t won a match in two years before this tournament.”

An hour later, she giggled her way through a news conference, talking about herself as part of the Wimbledon final four as though it were a punchline of a joke.

“If you told me I would be in the semis of this tournament, I’d be like, ‘You’re funny,’” she said through a laugh before mentioning her recent grass-court ineptitude.

“Also just playing against Jess. I’m confident in myself and the player that I am, but I’m also looking at things,. I know tennis. If I wasn’t myself, I would take maybe her to win with that gamestyle she has on this surface.”

Pegula, who looked like the favorite to go all the way at the start of the day, said Gauff’s serve baffled her throughout, as it started shaky before Gauffy found her groove.

“She can serve really well, and then obviously sometimes she can throw in some double faults,” Pegula said. “I think that’s what makes it so hard to play against, you’re not really sure what’s coming.”

Still, the idea of a Gauff making a deep run on the Wimbledon would have felt as funny as Gauff described it to be a week ago. Ahead of the tournament, she lost her opening match at the Berlin Tennis Open. She flirted with entering another tune-up tournament at the last minute. Tennis players on the hunt for confidence usually can only find it through wins. And she needed one on grass in the worst way.

At the last minute, she opted to practice instead of compete. She felt she needed to focus on the fundamentals.

That now appears to have been a pretty masterful choice. For more than a week, she worked in the parts of her game that she could make work on the grass, instead of trying to produce some pre-conceived notion of beautiful grass-court play.

Tuesday afternoon against Pegula, the match became a microcosm of that process. She began trying to force herself into the ideal of grass-court play — keeping points short. A slew of errors followed.

As the match wore on, she kept those grass fundamentals in her mind, but also remembered who she was.

“I just really honed in on my game and realized I don’t have to play a spectacular point every time to win, even though there were some spectacular points,” she said. “I think just trusting myself, trusting that my groundstrokes are good enough to be with anyone on this surface.”

She sure could. There were 12 points that lasted at least nine shots. Gauff won 12 of them. And once she dialed in her serve, she began to dominate the short points as well. She won just 16 of 39 points that lasted four shots or fewer in the first set. In the third set she won 24 of 38

Pegula tried to snuff out any semifinal dreams before they could get rolling Tuesday afternoon, with some help from Gauff, whose game was far too loose to capitalize on any early openings.

Gauff was a point away from a worry-free start but Pegula took advantage of two double faults to get the early break. Gauff would draw even midway through the first set at 3-3, but relinquished the advantage in the next game with two more double faults, and two forehand errors off Pegula’s trademark low-sliding balls that didn’t come up off the grass.

The next two games were more of the same, with Gauff floating too many balls off the court to handle the steadiness of a player who specializes in giving her opponents so little to work with. Gauff finished the set with 15 unforced errors against just six winners.

But as she so often does, Gauff refused to simply fade away. She has a way of taunting bad data into inspiration. She played a pretty poor set but still had her chances to win it. As has become customary, so many of her second-serve points were lost to double faults that if she could get one in, she was winning them at a rate that basically every other player on the tour can only dream about.

She saved two break points in the opening game. As the temperature increased, her right shoulder seemed to loosen, and she started cranking her first serve into the 120mph range and topping out at 126.

In the eighth game, she went on the attack, as for the second set in a row (and for what would prove to be the second of three this match), Pegula played an anonymous service game full of missed first serves and passive second balls. Five points later, Gauff kicked a serve into the corner that Pegula could barely touch with the rim of her racket, and then cracked an ace down the T to get back to even.

She rode the momentum into the third set. A drop-shot / lob-volley combination gave her a break point in the third game, and then a twisting forehand passing shot gave her the edge.

But nothing is ever straightforward with Gauff, and Pegula rarely gets credit as a fighter who can hang with the sport’s best competitors. It’s part of what kept her in the sport through the first half of her 20s, when she struggled to break into the top 100.

With Gauff leading 3-2 and serving in the third set, Pegula dialed up her power and went on the run, chasing balls into the corners and outlasting Gauff on the kind of zig-zagging baseline battle that Gauff often uses to break the spirit of her opponents. When it was over, she was even with Gauff once more.

Just as soon, though, Gauff was back on the attack, breaking once more by seizing the advantage early as Pegula’s intensity again faded at the wrong time. Now it was Pegula who couldn’t get the low, skidding balls back over the net, as Gauff retook the lead and had the finish line and the semifinals in sight — if she could just keep cranking and landing that serve for another game or two.

She only needed one. With Pegula serving to stay in the match, Gauff followed the formula that had carried her to the edge. She smacked a second-serve return at Pegula’s feet to get to within two points of the win. From there, she was pushing at an open door, as Pegula, again stepping backward rather than forward, made two errors. On the second, Gauff’s arms flew into the air and she was grabbing at her head in disbelief

Her main goals for this tournament were to get a win on grass and then perhaps get to the quarterfinals, since she had never been past the fourth round. With her fourth three-set win in five matches, which is about as Gauff as it gets, she is into the last four.

“I want to play a match that I can leave, regardless of the result, proud of,” she said.

“That’s really the main thing I’ve been thinking about this whole tournament.”

On Thursday she will face Karolína Muchová, a master of touch and feel in the semifinals. Gauff will know which version of herself she needs to get past her, though she is already long past where she ever expected to be.

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