Gauff Escapes at Wimbledon, Seven Years After Her Breakthrough

For a set and a half, Coco Gauff looked in command. Then Wimbledon did what Wimbledon does to her, and the No. 7 seed had to dig her way out.

A tiebreak on the brink

Gauff beat Argentina's Solana Sierra 6-3, 3-6, 7-6(7) in the second round on Wednesday, but the final set was a scramble. Sierra, a qualifier, surged back to take the second and pushed the decider to a tiebreak, where she led and brought Gauff to within two points of defeat, ESPN reported. Gauff steadied herself, reeled off the closing points and came through after more than two hours, Olympics.com noted. She advances to face fellow American qualifier Claire Liu in the third round.

The echo of 2019

What gave the escape its charge was where it happened. Gauff spoke afterward about the strange familiarity of the walk to the court. "Every time I walk down this hallway, I get déjà vu," she said, recalling how endless that corridor felt when she first made it as a teenager.

The memory is a famous one. In 2019, a 15-year-old Gauff, then a qualifier ranked outside the game's elite, stunned five-time champion Venus Williams in the first round at the All England Club — a result that turned her into an overnight name and launched one of the sport's most closely watched careers. Wednesday's match, on the same stage almost exactly seven years later, offered an uncanny rhyme: the same court, the same sense of a career-shaping moment hanging on a few points, only this time with Gauff the seasoned favorite rather than the wide-eyed newcomer.

Grass, her puzzle

For all her success elsewhere, Gauff has often described grass as her trickiest surface — the low bounces and quick footing a stubborn fit for her game. Escapes like this one, then, count for more than the ranking points. Surviving a match she might once have lost is the kind of result that can loosen a player on a surface that has vexed her, and it keeps alive the chance of a deeper Wimbledon run than she has managed before.

Whether that run materializes will depend on the days ahead, starting with Liu. But for one afternoon, a near-exit turned into a comeback — and a reminder of how far Gauff has traveled since the last time this court belonged to her.