Coco Gauff’s plan for Iga Swiatek? Play some French Open doubles

Coco Gauff was back on the French Open clay on Wednesday for her next match.

No, not that one. Not the semifinal against Iga Swiatek, the world No 1 and three-time champion at Roland Garros, who has beaten her 10 times out of 11.

Gauff, a 20-year-old U.S. Open champion, was out on Court Simonne-Mathieu, the third-choice but most beautiful court on the grounds, hammering her way through a doubles quarterfinal with Katerina Siniakova, squeezing all the winning vibes out of the tournament that she can and hoping to ride them into one of the most daunting challenges of her young career.

(The afternoon quarterfinal ended up being a 48-minute affair: a 6-0, 6-2 pasting of Miyu Kato of Japan and Nadiia Kichenok of Ukraine.)

Swiatek has been largely unstoppable for four years at the French Open, winning three titles and getting back in the semifinals this time round.

On clay, she resembles one of those high-speed French trains (Train a Grande Vitesse, as the French call them) going down a hill at top speed. Naomi Osaka, a four-time Grand Slam champion, came within a point of knocking her out of the tournament in the second round before Swiatek improbably clawed back points and then games and finally the match.

Since then, the Pole has lost just eight games in three matches. During one particularly potent stretch from the end of her third-round match to the middle of her quarterfinal, she won 21 consecutive games, eight of them against the reigning Wimbledon champion, Marketa Vondrousova.

​​”Very tough to play,” Vondrousova said after shaking off the drubbing. “She just, you know, pushes you every rally. I feel like you just go crazy every point.”

Swiatek is the sort of player that might encourage an upcoming opponent to kick back on a couch with her feet up to get some rest, maybe scrolling through videos in search of some window into a weakness that might be exploited.

Gauff has done exactly the opposite since she finished off Ons Jabeur in three hard-fought sets early on Tuesday afternoon, 4-6, 6-2, 6-4.

Gauff said she had risen at 7am in her Paris hotel room that day, after about eight and a half hours of sleep. She generally shoots for between eight and nine, she said. She had some breakfast and was at Roland Garros by 8:15, getting ready for her 9:15 pre-match hit that lasted about 45 minutes. 

She walked onto Court Philippe Chatrier for her match with the Tunisian eighth seed just after 11 and played for nearly two hours.

She changed her clothes, had a quick light lunch in the players’ restaurant, then headed to the gym to get ready for her doubles match. 

She ran into Siniakova there and had a brief chat about their opponents, Wang Xinyu of China and Ena Shibahara of Japan, an experienced team that Gauff and Siniakova have both played against but not with each other: This is the Siniakova-Gauff pairing’s first tournament.

At 3:15 p.m, they took the court together and pretty much rammed through Wang and Shibahara over the next 75 minutes in a match that wasn’t always so friendly. Gauff and Shibahara traded peltings early in the second set. Siniakova also beaned Gauff with a forehand to the back of the head at one point. 

As the afternoon stretched on, Gauff’s longtime physio, Maria Vago, put her head down on a stadium rail for a brief rest.

Coco Gauff has only dropped one set in singles at this year’s French Open (Dan Istitene/Getty Images)

Gauff was no worse for the wear, getting better as the match wore on, better even than she had been against Jabeur. Her sometimes shaky forehands blazed down the alleys and her serve became ever more reliable as she and Siniakova mostly cruised to a 6-4, 6-4 victory. 

“It was like a twin-bill baseball, let’s play two,” Gauff’s coach, Brad Gilbert, a devout Oakland A’s fan, said of the long morning and afternoon. “She started a little slow, but she got better when she needed to.”

Gauff cooled down in the gym, did some interviews, and finally, around 6pm, it was time to head back to the hotel and think about dinner.

Gauff said the day was “pretty normal.”

Really?

“Honestly, I prefer to double up sometimes than go, like, once every day,” she said. “Doubles doesn’t take for me that much energy,” – bit of a flex there – “especially playing with Katerina. She’s obviously a very accomplished doubles player. I let her do her thing and I just kind of try to do my best to hold up my end of the court.”

Siniakova, a seven-time Grand Slam doubles champion from the Czech Republic, was supposed to play with Taylor Townsend, who pulled out at the last minute with an injury. Townsend suggested that Siniakova reach out to Gauff, whose usual partner, Jessica Pegula, is also injured. There was a text and a kind of dreamy partnership for two of the best doubles players in the world has followed.

“Coco is all around, she’s running a lot,” Siniakova said. “I can do a lot at the net and she does the stuff from the baseline and I think even if we are opposite we are trying to play aggressive.”

Having a serve that nudges up to 120mph helps plenty, too.

Coco Gauff and Iga Swiatek during the 2022 final at Roland Garros (Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

Swiatek in singles should be a significantly more challenging task. Gauff didn’t find the winning formula against her until last August in Cincinnati and she did not have to face her during her breakout run through the U.S. Open field for her first Grand Slam title, a win that turned her into a massive celebrity. 

They met in the final here two years ago, with Swiatek prevailing 6-1, 6-3. Gauff said she had to find a better formula for taking on Swiatek, especially on clay. 

“I’m going to try to get, you know, a plan from my team and then also my own plan and see where we can find a blend,” she said. 

That had to wait though. Dinner, sleep, another doubles match. 

These days, Gauff has a lot to do.

(Top photo: Meng Dingbo / Xinhua via Getty Images)