Tête de série n°2 et sérieuse prétendante au titre à Roland-Garros, Coco Gauff poursuit son parcours Porte d'Auteuil. Malgré quelques irrégularités au service, l'Américaine n'a pas encore perdu le moindre set, et a terrassé ce samedi, au troisième tour, la Tchèque Marie Bouzkova (6-1, 7-6(3)). Elle affrontera en huitièmes la Russe Ekaterina Alexandrova (n°20). Notons que depuis 2021, Coco Gauff n'est jamais tombée avant les quarts à Roland-Garros. La Russe devra réaliser un exploit.
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00:00BNP Paribas, partenaire des plus belles histoires de Roland-Garros, aux côtés des ramasseurs de balles depuis plus de 50 ans.
00:30I think Sonia played especially well, and having to save those match points, I really just tried to dig deep, and I really wanted to make sure that she won the point and I didn't give it away, so happy to still be in the tournament.
00:45Questions, please? Start with Matt.
00:50Well done. You obviously won some huge, very tight points in Australia, though I don't think you saved a match point, but you did?
01:00Oh, sorry about that. I was just talking about this.
01:05Yes, big one. Anyway, against Ega? That's what I thought. Okay, my bad.
01:12So, like, how has what goes through your brain changed over the years in terms of in those moments versus in past parts of your career?
01:27I think, especially tonight, I just kept thinking before each match point that, like I said, I wanted to make sure that I didn't give the point away.
01:37I wanted to make sure that I stayed tough and that she had to win the point, and if she did, then great, I did my part, and I could walk away with my head held high.
01:46So, I really just wanted to kind of buckle down and make as many balls as possible, and I was able to do that.
01:56Madison, congratulations on today. Obviously, the scheduling is a big talking point this week, and I know Coco has spoken about it, Ega has spoken about it once, of course.
02:08I wonder what are your thoughts about the scheduling of women's matches here, and do you think maybe you should come together to, you know, present the interests of the WTA players in some way, not only here, but in general, in tennis?
02:22I mean, I think women typically have night matches everywhere else, so I don't think it's a point of discussion at other tournaments.
02:29It's obviously been a hot topic here.
02:34Seeing as there's only one match, I think that it's much different than other tournaments, but I think women's matches are very entertaining, and they have great value, and they deserve to be the feature match.
02:48Just to follow up, what do you think the solution is here?
02:53The solution is to put them at night.
02:57So, no, because Yannick Sr. said, you know, because it's a short match, maybe we can put only if it's two matches, but if you can't put two matches, then it should be men, so...
03:06I don't get paid enough to make those decisions, so I feel like that's on the tournament directors.
03:11Thank you.
03:13You do get paid a lot by these tournaments, but maybe not.
03:16Not for those decisions, though.
03:17Fair enough.
03:18You play Hayley Baptiste next.
03:21I remember your match in D.C. years ago, which was her first tour-level match, where she kind of came out of roughly nowhere and to win that one.
03:27What do you remember about that?
03:28And then you've played since then as well, so what do you make of her as a player and as a next opponent for you?
03:34I think Hayley's a great player.
03:36I think she's been a great player, and I feel like she's really kind of found her form the past, I mean, I would say year and a half, two years, but especially the past couple of months.
03:44She's had some really great wins and is playing some really good tennis.
03:48I'm not surprised I've seen her growing up.
03:51I think she's had incredible talent the entire time, so really happy for her to see all of the success that she's having, kind of putting that all together and climbing up the rankings.
04:02All that said, I think it's going to be a really tough match.
04:06She's very talented.
04:07She has a lot of tangibles, and she knows how to kind of mix up paces, but can also all of a sudden absolutely crack the ball.
04:15So, it's going to be a really tough match, but looking forward to it.
04:20Congratulations.
04:23Before Australia, I watched you a lot, and you have lost matches that you could have won.
04:29Thank you.
04:30No, no, that little things made the difference, but after Australia, I think everything is possible with you after these special matches that you won.
04:40And what are your feelings now for what's coming up in this tournament?
04:44Because anything is possible.
04:49I think that I have, in the past, kind of continued to put myself in positions to get deep in tournaments and fallen short some of the time.
05:00But, obviously, in Australia, I felt like it was finally the opportunity that having the experience that I had under my belt, I was finally able to kind of cross that finish line and do that.
05:10And I think the whole point of the sport is to constantly put yourself in the position to make runs and have big wins and all of that.
05:20So, I think that I'm going to continue to kind of just focus on that and kind of rely on that experience that I've now had to win big matches.
05:30And I feel like, you know, using that experience worked well tonight.
05:36You hit a couple big aces in that last game as you served out the match.
05:40And I'm just wondering if you, when you hit those shots, if you're going for trying to hit a clean ace all the time, if you see something in her, where she's standing or something.
05:47Yeah, you're nodding.
05:48Yeah.
05:50Okay, then.
05:51I guess, but, yeah, so what do you, how do you know, like, how do you see, like, a green light in your mind for, like, okay, I got this in one shot?
05:59I feel like, for me, my mentality on my serve is always a lot better when I'm trying to be aggressive.
06:06I feel like if I am trying to be a little bit more cautious, it kind of is a little bit more tentative and I don't really go for it enough.
06:15So I think walking up to the line, knowing that I have a big serve and that I'm pretty precise at hitting it where I want it to go.
06:25I think just walking up to the line, that's, that's the number one goal is I'm going to go for it.
06:30I'm going to try to, you know, hit an ace up the tee.
06:33And then if it kind of veers one way or the other, then that's okay.
06:38I just feel way better if I miss it a little bit wide, but going for it, that feels 10 times better than going up and trying to hit a three quarters serve and missing it.
06:49And then just feeling terrible about it.
06:51Did you see something in her return positioning that was an opening for you?
06:56I think that she was guarding the wide a little bit more, especially on the deuce side.
07:03But I also think that a lot of times when I go up to the line, I kind of just pick a spot and go for it.
07:09Physically, do you feel different late in these matches than you used to in terms of just your fitness being better?
07:20And to that point, have you not mastered, but gotten better at sort of managing the stress and exhaustion of these sort of two week things with your routines in between matches and nights like this and off the court?
07:37I think that fitness wise, I mean, I feel very fit and I feel like I could play long matches and like I keep laughing because I was like the losingest winner of Australia ever.
07:51So clearly I can be out on the court for a really long time.
07:54I think the bigger thing that I've really had to focus on is how to manage my stress in matches.
08:03I think a lot of times that's kind of where I would bail out of points early.
08:09I don't think it was really a physical issue.
08:11I think it was more mentally trying to shorten the points a little bit too soon just to kind of rush to get to the finish line.
08:17So I think that has been more of what I've had to focus on versus just straight up fitness.
08:24But I think that that and then weirdly on off days, I actually am trying to focus on actually enjoying the tour a little bit more and where I am in the cities and going out.
08:39I think in the past I would kind of almost become a little bit of a hermit during these events just because I always wanted to save all my energy, never wanted to maybe be, you know, tired for a match.
08:52But all of a sudden I was in these cities for two weeks and I never saw anything other than my hotel room.
08:59And that was not the life that I wanted to live.
09:02And I wanted to really kind of enjoy my time on tour, which I think helps my performance.
09:09Just following up on that then, what made you make that change to decide to want to enjoy life on tour more?
09:16I think it was really just I've had so many years on tour and I would go home and, you know, people would ask me, oh, like, have you seen this?
09:26And I was like, no. Have you seen that? And I was like, I legitimately saw the tennis center in my hotel room for 15 days straight.
09:34And I just didn't want it to be like that.
09:36We get to travel the world and we get to come go to all these amazing cities and places.
09:41And and I didn't want to keep going to the same three restaurants that I've been to for 15 years.
09:45And that was kind of just the push where I kind of just wanted to get out a little bit more.
09:51And then from there, I noticed that I felt even better on the court just because I actually had a life outside of tennis, which felt like a little bit more balance.
10:01And then from there, it was kind of like, oh, I guess I can do this.
10:05And just for me, one of your most impressive shots this year has been your back end down the line.
10:10Just curious what your relationship with that shot is.
10:13It's obviously a really difficult one, right?
10:16But I think you've been hitting it really well.
10:18Bjorn's going to be devastated to hear you say that.
10:20He hates when I take my back hand up the line.
10:23Why?
10:24Because he thinks that it should take it across 99 percent of the time.
10:29And I typically go for something ridiculous down the line and I make it and I look at him and give him a funny face.
10:36So I really like it.
10:40And I'm glad that I have you as backup for my next argument that I have with him.
10:46Great question.
10:48Can you just tell us what you've actually visited once when you're on tour recently when you say go out and look at things?
10:56Have you seen anything in Paris so far?
10:58I don't know.
10:59In Paris, I actually, last year I did one of the bus tours so I could actually see a lot of the sights.
11:07And in Rome, we did a Colosseum tour.
11:11And I visited some of the kind of wine bars and some of the local just kind of neighborhood spots.
11:21Related to that, a lesson we all in this room could learn from, when did that start for you?
11:34When did you first start making an effort to get out of your hotel room and away from the tennis centers?
11:40I really, really started trying to do it.
11:45Well, honestly, it kind of started during United Cup when I played whatever year that was, 2023, which I still say is like the most fun week of my entire life on the tennis tour.
11:57And we, I mean, we went out to dinner all the time as a big group.
12:03We were going to escape rooms.
12:04We were just doing a lot of things.
12:06And it kind of carried from there where we would be in random cities and Jess and Des would want to go to an escape room.
12:13So we started doing that.
12:14And then we, you know, occasionally we'll all go to dinner together.
12:18And it just kind of snowballed into that.
12:20And I kind of realized that I like having actually spending time with my friends on tour outside of the tennis facilities.
12:30And like I said, it's just, it kind of added a nice balance to my life where I wasn't just a tennis player.
12:37And I feel like these, especially these long events, it's very easy to kind of get sucked into the same routine.
12:45And all of a sudden you blink and it's 12 days later.
