Coco Gauff and Madison Key's French Open quarterfinal and a clash of tennis superpowers

New York Times

2 days ago

ROLAND GARROS, PARIS — There's a moment in nearly every long tennis point involving Coco Gauff these days, when an opponent believes she's won it with a ball that lands an inch or two from the line.
Then it comes back, and then then so does another, and maybe one or two more. When it finally ends, often in Gauff stealing it, there's a marked contrast between the two players. One player is doubled over, gasping for air. The other is strolling into position for the next point, mouth closed, air calmly streaming in and out of her nose.
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Guess who is who?
Off all of Gauff's superpowers, put those lungs at the top.
There's a moment in nearly every Madison Keys match these days — especially during a Grand Slam — when her back is against a wall and she really needs the point. One player is shifting around, wincing with stress, while the other one looks like it's 1-1 in the first set.
Keys used to look like the apocalypse had arrived in those moments. In the past year, she has acquired a preternatural calm, a deep breath into her lungs in moments of strife. She displayed it over and over again on her march to the Australian Open title in January. She displayed it again against fellow American Sofia Kenin in the third round at Roland Garros, saving three match points late in the third set.
The points that used to crush her have become the ones when she turns to her husband and coach, Bjorn Fratangelo, sitting courtside in her box, with an 'I've got this' look – because she genuinely does.
Wednesday's French Open quarterfinal duel between Gauff and Keys exists on multiple levels. They got tagged with the 'next Serena Williams' label at a young age, roughly eight years apart. Keys, 30, has watched Gauff, 21, evolve and endure an uber-version of what she went through during her late teens, when everyone told her the sport was hers for the taking.
The apparent generational battle manifests as one of styles on the tennis court. Keys was reared in an era when the game was about digging in and swinging hard. Gauff grew up as the focus shifted toward movement and court coverage, the ability to find winners or reverse the momentum of points from every spot on the court.
And then there's the clash of the powers that stands out more than any other. Gauff's engine against Keys' ability to lower her blood pressure when everyone else's spikes. This match may turn on those more than anything else.
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Gauff said over the weekend that there's only one player on the tour who can stay with her in a long match: Zheng Qinwen, who matched her shot for shot for over three hours in their past two matches, both of which Gauff won.
In Gauff's third-round match at Roland Garros, Marie Bouzková of the Czech Republic tried to beat her by becoming a human backboard, stretching points with deep looping shots in a bid to induce errors from an impatient Gauff. For a while, it worked, but Bouzková lacked the weapons to win her service games after playing lungbusters for most of Gauff's. The American ended up with a 20-12 edge on points that lasted longer than eight shots.
There was one especially long point, early in the second set, that had both players scrambling up and back and all across the baseline. Bouzková won it. Gauff didn't care, because she looked over and saw Bouzková bent over, using her racket to keep her from tumbling onto the clay.
'I was aware that my heartbeat wasn't really high at all,' Gauff said with a grin. 'It felt fine.'
Gauff knew that was one way that Bouzková likes to play. With a set in that bank, Gauff was pretty sure there was no way she could manage that against her for the better part of two more sets.
The advantage becomes especially stark when she plays against teenagers who, regardless of their talent, don't have the miles in their legs or their lungs. In the second round, the shoulders of Tereza Valentová, 18 and a rising Czech talent, were heaving between points after 45 minutes. The same happened to Victoria Mboko, the 18-year-old Canadian making waves this spring, who took the first set off Gauff at the Italian Open then quickly realized her gas gauge had tipped to empty.
None of this surprises Chris Eubanks very much. Eubanks, the ATP Tour player, Gauff's surrogate big brother, and an analyst for TNT at this tournament, has known Gauff since their early childhood days in Atlanta, before Gauff moved to Florida. When Gauff was 15, Eubanks, who is eight years older than her, started spending as many as 10 days training with Gauff during the off-season. By then, she was already doing full-on adult-style track and gym workouts.
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Training with Gauff in the heat of South Florida is not for the faint of heart, he said. Every drill becomes a contest, even when they're just going cross-court or down the line at each other. He's not sure just what it takes to make her crack.
'There's never been a day on which we've been practicing together and you felt like, she's she's giving out,' he said during an interview this week in Paris. 'She's always been ultra competitive. I've never personally seen her seen gas on a on a court in a match or or in practice.'
What might set Gauff apart, Eubanks said, is that plenty of players view fitness work as homework, something they have to do but would happily skip if that was an option for those seeking to reach the top. Gauff actually likes it. And it's led to success in those long matches, which makes her confidence grow when the clock ticks.
'If you've never done it, it can be a bit taxing,' Eubanks said.
'The more reps you get, I think the more confidence you get.'
Keys has been getting those reps. She spent the fall and winter working with Reshard Langford, a former NFL defensive back who is now one of the top strength and conditioning coaches at the U.S. Tennis Association. That's given her the belief that she can stay with Gauff physically, but she knows the red clay of Roland Garros only gives Gauff an even greater edge on the points when she can use her legs and her lungs.
'You're going to have to win the point multiple times before it's actually over,' Keys said. 'Then you also have the threat against her of, if at any point you lose control of the point, she's going to be the aggressor.'
Keys does not want to let that happen. She's worked on getting comfortable with all the difficult moments that tennis requires, with accepting that she needs to take her chances and go for her shots and not worry so much about the outcome. Safe and tentative is not where she wants to be, regardless of what the scoreboard says. Never did she display that more than in the Australian Open final against Aryna Sabalenka, serving at 5-5, 30-30 in the deciding set.
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Sabalenka sent a return screeching back at Keys' shins. She bent her knees, let the ball come across her body and redirected it into the postage stamp in the opposite corner of the court. The kind of shot that looks good on television, but whose brilliance comes with the fact that it is a shot that only a tennis player with diamond conviction can produce.
What a cracker from @Madison_Keys!
Maybe the best shot of her career, at maybe the biggest moment of her career!
She's on the cusp!@wwos • @espn • @eurosport • @wowowtennis • #AusOpen • #AO2025 pic.twitter.com/ZuxfiiVz5X
— #AusOpen (@AustralianOpen) January 25, 2025
'In the past I would maybe get a little bit more tentative and kind of play a little bit more defensively in big moments, and now trying to make the push to continue to play the way that I was playing in order to get up in scores,' Keys said in Paris.
What becomes apparent when listening to Keys is how little of this is the product of changes in technique and equipment, even though she has tweaked her serve and changed her racket. The bigger changes can happen on the off days, when she takes in the sights in world capitals instead of hibernating in her hotel room. Losing is fine, as long as she loses on her terms.
That goes a long way when she's facing match point or when she's holding one, or when she just wants to show Fratangelo who's the boss. For instance, he wants her hitting her backhand crosscourt about 99 percent of the time.
'I typically go for something ridiculous down the line and I make it, and I look at him and give him a funny face,' Keys said.
There will likely be a moment Wednesday when Keys will look across the net and think of the version of Coco Gauff she met roughly a decade ago, when Gauff was a hyper-talented tween headed for big things amid big hype.
'It's been really fun kind of getting to see her do so well at such a young age,' Keys said of Gauff.
She's older now. They both are.