Coco Gauff’s career path suggests that she will win at least one French Open title because she has been good on clay courts. She has a great chance to win it this year, but first she’ll have to go through the defending champion, Iga Swiatek.
Gauff and Swiatek are going to clash for the seventh time ever, and the French Open 2023 odds favour the Polish international to advance to the semi-finals given her dominant head-to-head record against her American counterpart.
Swiatek remains the heavy favourite to win in this tournament, but fellow top seeds Ons Jabeur and Aryna Sabalenka will have something to say about that, especially with both of them currently in great form.
Learn more about the latest French Open 2023 updates, as SBOTOP has you covered.
Swiatek and Gauff to meet again
Iga Swiatek and Coco Gauff have formed a rivalry in the past few years, although it has been rather one-sided, as the former had won all of their six previous meetings before their latest encounter later in the quarter-finals.
Each of Swiatek’s victories over Gauff has been in straight sets. The Pole most recently beat Gauff in the Dubai Championships semi-finals last February.
Four of their six previous meetings happened last season, including the Roland Garros final, where Swiatek won with a score of 6-1, 6-3, leaving Gauff in tears because it was her first major singles final loss.
This year, Swiatek has picked up where she left off. Perhaps drawing inspiration from her music idol Taylor Swift on her birthday worked wonders, as she has yet to drop a set, with four of her seven set wins being by a 6-0 scoreline.
Just like last year, Swiatek is locked in against Gauff, especially because her No. 1 WTA ranking is on the line in this competition.
“This is a totally different year, totally different tournament,” said Swiatek about taking on Gauff once more. “I have to be ready, regardless of what happened last year.”
Like Swiatek, Gauff has also taken care of business here at Roland Garros. And now that she’s here, Gauff is aiming to take down Swiatek once and for all.
“I think it would be almost cowardly to say that I want to not face the noise and not face the challenge, but I think that I’m up for it,” said Gauff. “I’m the type of mentality, if you want to be the best, you have to beat the best.”
Jabeur’s redemption path
Everything seems to be falling into place for Ons Jabeur because she’s through to her first-ever Roland Garros quarter-finals.
After beating Bernarda Pera on Monday, Jabeur became the first tennis player (male or female) of African descent to reach the quarter-finals in each of the four Grand Slam tournaments in the Open Era. The Tunisian tennis star even did Cristiano Ronaldo’s famous “SIUUU” celebration following the victory.
Jabeur had dealt with injuries in the last few months. After exiting the Australian Open in the second round, she underwent knee surgery but then suffered a calf injury during her Stuttgart Open semi-final run, causing her to withdraw from the Madrid Open.
She said that those challenges helped her become a better tennis player, and she’ll look to use her learnings as she goes deeper into this competition.
“I have learned a lot about how to accept things, either good or bad,” said Jabeur. “For me, being injured was part of my path. I worked a lot on my mental health and worked a lot on how to manage all this.”
Sabalenka ends clay-court semis drought
Aryna Sabalenka is finally through to the semi-finals of a clay-court Grand Slam for the first time in her career after she eliminated Elina Svitolina on Tuesday night.
The Belarusian star seized control of the match in the middle of each set, as she won three consecutive games from 4-3 down in the opener and four straight from 2-0 down in the second set.
The current Australian Open champion has yet to lose a set in five matches this year and has reached the semi-finals at all four Grand Slams. On Tuesday, she had 30 winners compared to Svitolina’s seven, and she also won 12 of the 17 points in which she came to the net.
After beating Svitolina, Sabalenka will face Karolina Muchova in the semi-final, who defeated Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in straight sets. Muchova may be an unseeded opponent, but don’t let that fool you, as she was once a Top 20 player.
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