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Matt Walsh
Multiple Authors
MELBOURNE, Australia — It took just 59 minutes for world No. 3 Coco Gauff‘s Australian Open campaign to come to an end, with 12th seeded Elina Svitolina cruising to a quarterfinal victory Tuesday night.
Gauff looked out-of-sorts from the very first game of the match, and was unable to find her rhythm, her serve, or her groundstrokes in the 6-1, 6-2 loss.
For Svitolina, it’s a second straight win over a top-10 opponent, and it marks the Ukrainian’s return to the top 10 for the first time since 2021.
Here’s what went wrong for Gauff.
Svitolina found her groove faster and it unsettled Gauff
At the Grand Slam quarterfinal stage, nerves are always going to be high, and it was evident for both Gauff and Svitolina early in the match. Gauff served first, and the pair exchanged three breaks of serve before Svitolina managed to steady herself and consolidate the break in the fourth game of the set.
Through her first two service games, Gauff had three double faults, including on break point to give her opponent the 2-1 lead. In fact, Gauff wouldn’t hold her serve all first set, and her frustration was evident as she looked over to her player’s box multiple times looking for some answers.
“I tried my best to be positive, but I just felt like nothing for me at the moment was working,” Gauff said in her news conference following the loss. “That’s a bit frustrating when you are out there and you feel like your strengths aren’t really doing their thing.”
Over the course of the match, Gauff won just 13 of 32 points on her first serve (41% to Svitolina’s 71%), and only 2 of 11 points on her second serve (18% to Svitolina’s 50%). Svitolina, 31, kept a steadier hand and head.
There were further distractions — Gauff sent rackets away for restringing, unhappy with the tension — but it was for nothing as Svitolina raced to a 6-1 lead after just 29 minutes.
“I just felt like, OK, obviously you want to win the first set when you’re in a quarterfinal in general, but I couldn’t change that, so I felt like emotionally, I think it was just frustration, and it showed,” Gauff said later of being a set down so quickly.
Gauff’s ground game abandoned her, big time
When Gauff and her coaching staff go through the tape of this match, one thing will become glaringly obvious: She just made far too many errors.
Five double faults, 26 unforced errors and only three winners. In her fourth-round win over Karolina Muchova just two days before — a three-setter — Gauff hit 18 winners for her 26 errors.
The quarterfinal was a nightmare outing for the American, as she struggled to dictate play, and was unable to hit the sidelines and baseline with her attacking shots.
Elina Svitolina DOMINATING the first set with winners that got us going 🤩 @wwos • @espn • @tntsports • @wowowtennis • #AO26 pic.twitter.com/QchzwoVTFd
— #AusOpen (@AustralianOpen) January 27, 2026
At one point, her box had to reassess the game plan. “[Svitolina] is playing great. Literally aim middle for now, that’s it,” said her coach, Gavin MacMillan.
In an effort to build Gauff’s confidence in her ground strokes, her coaches were telling her to play “safe” tennis, a clear indication something wasn’t right.
“I was just asking, like, ‘Am I playing wrong?’ Just asking for advice,” Gauff said.
“Obviously she was playing well and I wasn’t. So they were just telling me to go for bigger targets, hit through the middle. But, I don’t know, I just felt like hitting through the middle against her wasn’t working, because she was hitting winners. So, yeah, it was just an awkward day, I think.”
In the final game of the match, on Gauff’s serve, the final three points of the match were uncharacteristic Gauff errors: attempted passing shots that missed the mark by around a foot each time.
“She played really well,” Gauff conceded. “And, unfortunately, usually when people raise their level, I’m able to raise mine, and today, I just didn’t do that.”
For Gauff, it’s a second consecutive quarterfinal exit in Melbourne, after making a semifinal here in 2024. For Svitolina, it’s a first Australian Open semifinal berth. She’ll face world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka on Thursday for a place in Saturday’s final.
