PARIS — Coco Gauff is making it look easy at the Paris Olympics so far, adding a 6-1, 6-1 victory over Maria Lourdes Carle of Argentina in the second round of singles Monday to her growing collection of lopsided results.
So what if Gauff had more than twice as many unforced errors (26) as winners (11)? So what if she only put 55% of her first serves in play? So what if she wound up with six double-faults and zero aces?
So what if it took nearly 1½ hours for the reigning US Open champion and No. 2-ranked Gauff to finish off an opponent who is ranked 85th, has never won a tour-level singles title and owns an 0-2 career record at Grand Slam tournaments?
“You can’t argue with the scoreline, to be honest,” the 20-year-old American said.
Sure can’t.
Look at what she has managed to do so far at her first Olympics: Not only is Gauff 3-0 across singles and women’s doubles, where her partner is Jessica Pegula, but she has dropped a combined total of only nine games across six sets in those three matches.
“I knew that she was just going to probably try to out-rally me, which I feel like is one of my strengths. But also I had the ability to be aggressive,” Gauff said about the matchup with Carle, someone she was familiar with from their days as junior players. “So I think I was just trying to balance the mistakes and not let her win a lot of points off my racket.”
Her match was played at Court Suzanne Lenglen at the same time that, across the way at Court Philippe Chatrier, Novak Djokovic was beating Rafael Nadal 6-1, 6-4 in the 60th head-to-head matchup between two rivals with 46 Grand Slam titles between them.
Gauff said she was “kind of sad” that she missed the chance to watch a contest between two players who “mean a lot” to their sport.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.