Muguruza outlasts Gauff to make last 16 in Rome

ROME, Italy – No.9 seed Garbiñe Muguruza recovered from a set down to defeat Coco Gauff, 7-6(3), 3-6, 6-3 in the second round of the Internazionali BNL d'Italia.

After claiming the opening set on a tiebreak, the two-time major winner saw her 16-year-old opponent recover to win the second. 

Gauff took the advantage in the third, but a game in which she hit three successive double faults changed the course of the match and allowed the Australian Open runner-up, whose backhand was struck sweetly throughout, to move through into the last 16 in Rome for the fourth time after a meeting that lasted two hours 27 minutes.

"It was a tough match," she reflected. "The first set was tight, it could have gone either way. I was happy it went my way after a good fight.

"In the second set, I missed a couple of shots. I didn't take the opportunities I had and she was there the whole time.

"Then in the third set, it was  just a battle. I managed to be solid, to play my game and to take the opportunities I didn't in the second set."

There was little to pick between the players in a first set that lasted one minute short of an hour. Muguruza’s hitting was marginally more penetrative as she hit 13 winners to nine from her opponent, while the frame would go all the way to a tiebreak after the players exchanged a break each.

Although the American played an extraordinary volley to take the initiative on the very first point of the deciding game, the 2016 French Open champion kept in touch and moved ahead 4-3 with a well-timed ace. Excellent deep hitting took her to the brink of the opener, which was sealed with her fifth ace of the first set.

While Muguruza sought to strengthen her grasp on the match by become even more aggressive at the start of the second, Gauff would weather the storm impressively and go on to dominate it, aided by an early break.

When she was briefly threatened in the following game, she found a big serve to propel her to safety then added a second break in an entertaining fifth game, which she sealed with a wrong-footing drive at the net.

Having controlled play in the first half of the set, matters became slightly more complicated in the second part of it as Muguruza increasingly lobbed in an attempt to counter Gauff’s aggressive forays to the net. The Spaniard did manage to wrestle one break back, but after missing an opportunity to level, Gauff shut her out.

"I don't look at her as a different player," Muguruza said after the match. "She's here and she's playing, and it doesn't matter how old she is.

"She a great competitor and she can play very well, as she's proven to us."

The teenager proved that a little more at the beginning of the deciding set, with some big hitting once again establishing a lead.

Where she was saved big some big serving in the previous set, though, she was let down by the same shot on this occasion. Three successive double faults opened the door for Muguruza to level, and in her next service game Gauff delivered two more as the match turned on its head.

Another double fault from the teenager, her 15th in total, saw Muguruza earn three match points, and when a forehand from her opponent was slashed into the net, she sealed a victory that sets up a meeting with either Irina-Camelia Begu or No.7 seed Johanna Konta in the third round.