No. 3 seed Coco Gauff kicked off her seventh Australian Open appearance with a 6-2, 6-3 win over Uzbaekistan’s Kamilla Rakhimova on Monday inside Rod Laver Arena.
Australian Open: Scores | Draws | Order of play
In 1 hour and 39 minutes, Gauff improved her sparkling first-round record at Grand Slam tournaments to 23-4 — and secured her 75th overall match win at a major in the process.
It was a match that was closer than the scoreboard indicated: While Gauff dropped just four games against the World No. 93, the first set in particular was tighter than it looked. Five of the seven games went to deuce — and Gauff won three of them.
Much of that came because Gauff struggled with her serve early on. In the first set, she struck six double faults and only won 27% of the points when she needed to hit a second serve. She faced six break points, but saved five. Two of those came in a five-deuce first service game, and she turned aside three more in the sixth game to extend her lead to 5-1.
In all, she needed six set points to move into the lead.
Things were much more routine in the second set, at least early. Gauff turned a 1-0 deficit into a 5-1 lead without touching deuce, but Rakhimova was not ready to go quietly. She won a four-deuce service game to force Gauff to serve for the match, and the two-time Grand Slam champion threw in a nervous game to put another mark to Rakhimova’s side of the scoreboard. But Gauff sealed the win with her sixth break of serve.
Gauff continues to win the matches she should: The American has now won her last 22 matches against players ranked outside the Top 50 in the PIF WTA Rankings at Grand Slam level. Her last loss came to then-No. 128 Sofia Kenin at Wimbledon three years ago.
More impressively, that record extends to 35-1 since back-to-back losses to then-No. 61 Sloane Stephens at the 2021 US Open, and then-No. 110 Wang Qiang at the 2022 Australian Open.
Danilovic, not Venus, awaits: When the women’s draw was revealed, there was a chance that Gauff could meet Venus Williams in the second round — their first meeting on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz since a then-15-year-old Gauff defeated Williams in the first round of the 2020 Australian Open. But instead, World No. 69 Olga Danilovic will be on the other side of the net after the left-handed Serb came from 4-0 down in the final set to defeat Williams 6-7(5), 6-3, 6-4 on Sunday.
