Coco Gauff reached the Wimbledon semifinals for the first time in her career on Tuesday, rallying from a set down against fellow American Jessica Pegula to win 4-6, 6-3, 6-3 in an all-American quarterfinal on Centre Court, extending her record-setting run through the tournament with another demonstration of the competitive composure that has defined her this fortnight.
The victory made Gauff, 22, the youngest player to reach the semifinals at all four Grand Slams since a player accomplished the feat at the 2007 French Open. She will face tenth-seeded Karolina Muchova of the Czech Republic for a place in Saturday’s final. With both Gauff and Muchova having now reached the semifinals at all four major tournaments, it marks the first time multiple women have achieved that distinction at the same major since the 2003 US Open.
A difficult start and a decisive adjustment
The match did not begin cleanly for Gauff. She built a 40-0 lead in the opening game before losing five consecutive points, two on double faults, to surrender the game and fall behind immediately. A subsequent break of Pegula in the sixth game appeared to have stabilized the situation, but Gauff was broken back to love in her very next service game when two more double faults undermined her hold.
Those early service struggles cost her the first set, but they did not appear to affect her confidence heading into the second. She identified the adjustment she needed, getting more first serves into play and committing to her groundstrokes more fully against Pegula’s flat, low-bouncing ball. The third game of the second set saw her fire a serve exceeding 126 miles per hour, and the performance level she found from that point forward was substantially different from what the opening set had produced.
She won the second and third sets comfortably, sealing the match when Pegula’s backhand found the net on the first match point.
A first on Centre Court and a new stage of her career
In seven previous appearances at Wimbledon, Gauff had never advanced past the fourth round. She had reached the fourth round on multiple occasions, most famously as a 15-year-old in her debut at the tournament, but the quarterfinals had been as far as she had taken her game at the All England Club.
She described walking onto Centre Court for Tuesday’s match as the first time across all her appearances at the tournament that she did not feel nervous during her walk-on. The absence of that nervousness, in her framing, was evidence of the accumulated experience that seven years of competing at the tournament had produced, though she expressed it with characteristic self-awareness rather than as a declaration of arrival.
A semifinal with historical significance
The semifinal pairing of Gauff and Muchova represents a rare confluence of accomplishments. Both players have now reached the final four at each of the sport’s four major tournaments, a milestone that requires sustained excellence across multiple surfaces over extended periods of a career.
Gauff’s path through this Wimbledon has been consistently difficult. She has gone three sets in almost every match, facing pressure situations and navigating them without the panic that might undermine a less experienced competitor. She has credited that composure to a fundamental belief in her ability to compete when a match extends to a deciding set, a quality that has been tested and proven repeatedly during this tournament’s first two weeks.
Muchova advanced to her own semifinal on the same day by defeating Naomi Osaka, ending a run that had produced one of the tournament’s most compelling storylines. The two will meet for a place in Saturday’s final.
