Coco Gauff walked off No. 2 Court on Monday with a result that had eluded her for two years. The seventh seed beat Germany’s Tamara Korpatsch 6-2, 6-1, her first singles win on grass since the 2024 Championships, a routine win that ended an awkward run on the surface that fits her game least.
The drought. Before Monday, Gauff had not won a grass-court match since the third round at Wimbledon in 2024. A first-round exit here last year, against Dayana Yastremska, and an early loss to Paula Badosa in Berlin this month had stretched her losing run on the surface to three matches. The two-time major champion, who won the US Open in 2023 and Roland Garros in 2025, holds 11 career titles and none on grass.
Why the surface resists her. Grass is the statistical outlier in Gauff’s career, trailing hard courts and clay by win rate, and she has never been past the fourth round at the All England Club. The reasons are technical. Her topspin-heavy groundstrokes, which bite when the ball sits up on slower surfaces, surrender margin on a low, fast bounce, and her movement, a weapon elsewhere, is harder to trust on a surface that rewards short, balanced steps over outright speed. She put extra work into footwork before this tournament and has spoken of searching for a grass identity. Asked about the surface, she said she and grass “don’t have the best relationship.”
The opening. What Gauff has this year is a favorable draw. She landed in the same half as world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka, with a projected fourth-round meeting against Belinda Bencic, whom she leads in their head-to-head, and a likely quarterfinal against compatriot Jessica Pegula rather than an established grass specialist. The section offers her clearest route yet to a second week at Wimbledon. She next plays Uruguay’s Solana Sierra on Wednesday.
What to watch. The first-round win settles little on its own. Korpatsch arrived without a grass-court win all season, and the truer measure of whether Gauff’s adjustments have held will come against opponents able to exploit the surface. The draw means those tests may arrive later than usual. For now, a player who has struggled to carry her hard- and clay-court success onto grass has at least stopped the slide.
