Coco Gauff makes history as Jessica Pegula and Madison Keys join her in French Open third round

CNN

a day ago

Coco Gauff came through an unexpectedly difficult match against Tereza Valentová to win 6-2, 6-4 on Thursday, becoming the youngest player in 17 years to reach the third round of the French Open for five consecutive years.
The 21-year-old failed to hold her serve four times during the second set but broke back on five occasions to round off a topsy-turvy run and take the victory over her Czech opponent, who was last year's girls' champion in Paris.
Two-time French Open winner Maria Sharapova was also 21 when she reached the third round at Roland-Garros for the fifth straight year in 2008.
'I think overall it was fine. I think towards the end of the second set I could have been much more aggressive on the serve. The return game was pretty good,' said Gauff after her win, per rolandgarros.com. 'She's obviously a great young player, I knew it was going to be a tough match today.
'Definitely going to practice (tomorrow) and work on things I feel I could have done a lot better today.'
The world No. 2 won just 19% of her second serve points and had six double faults to her opponent's three.
Nonetheless, she has now won 12 of her last 14 matches as part of a run which has seen her reach the final of both the Madrid Open and Italian Open.
She will face Valentová's compatriot Marie Bouzková in the third round on Saturday.
Elsewhere, Jessica Pegula claimed a confident 6-3, 7-6(3) victory over Ann Li to record her 30th match-win of the year; only world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka has more.
In Gauff and Pegula, the US has two of the top three seeds at the French Open for the first time since Venus and Serena Williams in 2010, and Pegula put up a performance worthy of her ranking.
The 31-year-old dropped the first two games to her compatriot, but then won six of the next seven to breeze into a 1-0 lead.
In the second set, Pegula had to fend off two break points for Li and won the tiebreak with a deep backhand.
'It was a really tough match today,' Pegula said afterward, per the WTA. 'Ann has been playing some really good tennis this year and had a lot of close matches with good players. It was tricky with the wind. She was slicing a lot, kind of making me earn a lot of points.
'I felt like it was a pretty physical match, a lot of long points and long games. But happy I was able to kind of hold on to that second set there definitely.'
Pegula will play Markéta Vondroušová in the third round on Saturday.
Later on Thursday, Madison Keys, who is playing in her first grand slam since she won the Australian Open in January, eased to a 6-1, 6-3 victory over Katie Boulter.
In doing so, the 30-year-old became the oldest woman to win nine consecutive grand slam matches since Angelique Kerber in 2018, per the WTA.
Keys will face another former Australian Open winner, Sofia Kenin, on Saturday.