Coco Gauff’s Australian Open evaporates in loss to inspired Elina Svitolina

MELBOURNE, Australia — For a second consecutive year, Coco Gauff hit a wall during the quarterfinals of the Australian Open.

As with last year’s defeat against Paula Badosa, Gauff ran into an opponent who was mostly flowing when she could not. Fresh off upsetting No. 8 seed Mirra Andreeva, who had been looking ready to take over the tournament, Elina Svitolina jumped all over short balls and played the kind of front-foot tennis that usually makes Gauff retrieve, scramble and slice her way through matches.

Still, the biggest problem for Gauff Tuesday night on Rod Laver Arena was Gauff herself.

“Usually I’m able to kind of scrap out at least to make the scoreline tighter, and then you never know, nerves can come up on her, something like that,” Gauff said in her news conference.

“Today I just wasn’t able to do that.”

Under the roof at the end of a blistering day, Svitolina mostly flowed through a mixture of winners from her racket or errors from Gauff’s, the sheer speed of the games and points after a back-and-forth start leaving the American helpless to reset and recover. Gauff, a two-time Grand Slam champion, had one of those nights where everything goes wrong; Svitolina, the sports hero of Ukraine, cruised into her first Grand Slam semifinal in two and a half years with a 6-1, 6-2 win.

Within the first few games, Gauff was looking to her box in the corner of the court for assistance. Four games in, she brushed her hand across her strings, an indication that she and her team had miscalculated the tension she needed in conditions far different from her first four matches, all of which took place outdoors during the day.

In case there was any mystery about it, a ball girl was dispatched to redo three rackets, about half as many with which a pro will take to the court.

Gauff said she got confirmation a little late that the roof would be closed, creating an environment much different from the hot and breezy conditions of her other matches.

She thought the balls would move more slowly, and needed more pop from her strings. Instead, she appeared to have little feel for the ball, but she said it wasn’t why she lost.

“It was just something that, OK, I’m not feeling great, what can I change that’s in my control, and the tension is one of those things that I just thought that maybe I could change it and it would help,” she said.

Svitolina was leading 4-1 by then, and Gauff’s game had collapsed. That freed up Svitolina to widen her margins, shrinking the cage she had erected around Gauff’s forehand corner by just sending the ball back and forth down the middle, pouncing on anything short and varying angles enough to prevent Gauff from getting the rhythm she so badly needed. Svitolina lost the second game of the match, then won the next nine.

In the first set alone, Gauff double-faulted five times. She made 14 unforced errors and hit just two winners. She barely got to the net. Svitolina won 29 points to 16.

Gauff has played bad sets before. She probably does it more than any other top player. Usually her legs and her feet can bail her out. Speed and heart don’t ever have to go into a slump.

On this night though, Gauff didn’t start to move the way she can until halfway through the second set. By then, Svitolina was up a break and brimming with the confidence of someone who knew how grand an opportunity she had. On one last backhand error, and one last break, Gauff was out of the tournament in a minute under an hour.

She grabbed her bags quickly, and headed for the exits. This one hurt. In a rare show of frustration, Gauff smashed her lavender Head racket seven times on the concrete floor in the catacombs of the arena — thinking that it was private.

“Maybe some conversations can be had, because I feel like at this tournament the only private place we have is the locker room,” she said.

For Gauff, the losing stinks. What cuts even harder sometimes though is the inconsistency. In a sport where so much depends on a player’s average level being better than the opponent’s, Gauff can suffer wild swings of quality from match to match, even from set to set, far more so than the other players who have become mainstays of the top 5 the past three years.

In her post-match news conference, Gauff tried to be philosophical. Svitolina played well, she said, and helped make her play badly. Svitolina in fact played more than well. Just as she has done all year, upon her return from a break from tennis that she has described as essential in allowing her to keep playing, the No. 12 seed clicked into gear from the jump.

She had ended her season after the U.S. Open in September, burned out from the grind of the tour, the balancing act of the working-traveling parent, and the mental strain of having so many members of her family and friends living under Russia’s invasion.

She has now won 10 matches in a row, with wins over No. 8 seed Andreeva in Melbourne, rising teenager Iva Jović in Auckland and now Gauff, who looked to be favorite to set up another compelling encounter with Aryna Sabalenka.

In the early part of the match, Svitolina caged Gauff in one corner — but not the one people usually do. She traded backhand after backhand, hanging with the American’s favorite shot and refusing to change direction.

After three breaks went back and forth, Svitolina held for 3-1 and then changed tack, going after Gauff’s forehand relentlessly. If it broke down, job well done. If a short ball came, Svitolina would crush it inside-out on her forehand, or flow through it crosscourt on her backhand, levering it into the corners where Gauff’s legs just would not take her, for once.

Now Svitolina will face a tough and emotional test, this time against the world No. 1 Sabalenka of Belarus, Russia’s close ally in its invasion of Ukraine. In a news conference earlier in the tournament, Sabalenka said she wanted peace.

“It’s been a tough winter,” Svitiolina said.

“I feel like I bring a little light and just this positive news. It’s a great feeling.”

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