Behind World No.1 Aryna Sabalenka, the top seed and two-time defending Australian Open champion, perhaps no one on the Hologic WTA Tour has arrived at Melbourne Park for the year's first Grand Slam tournament feeling better than Coco Gauff. 

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Unbeaten to start the season, without the loss of a set no less, in Team USA's winning United Cup effort earlier this month, Gauff has posted an 18-2 record since the end of last summer's US Open, which included her second WTA 1000 victory, in Beijing, and her first year-end title at the WTA Finals Riyadh presented by PIF last fall.

She's shown world-beating form in that stretch, earning five Top 10 wins -- including victories over Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek in Saudi Arabia, and another over Swiatek at United Cup. But those kind of results are such that they may bring inherent pressures, where a player might feel an expectation to replicate such results on the biggest stage of all.

But not if you're Gauff. Ahead of her sixth Australian Open, the World No.3 says she is feeling the opposite -- dubbing her mindset as she hunts for a second major title as "relaxed and chill."

"I think for me it's like I know I've been playing well, but you can't play well all the time," Gauff said ahead of her first-round match against fellow American and 2020 Australian Open winner Sofia Kenin, scheduled for Monday in Melbourne. "I know there's going to be some tough moments in this tournament. Hopefully I can get through them.

"But I think just going in, entering with no pressure, just trying to stay in the moment and enjoy it as much as possible. That's what I've been doing the last few tournaments. The results have obviously been good because of that. But just trying to learn to do that even when the results aren't so good."

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It represents a complete reversal from how Gauff felt entering last year's final Grand Slam tournament, where she was the defending champion and was bundled out in the fourth round by Emma Navarro -- amid 60 unforced errors and 19 double faults. That performance taught her a lot, she says, and fueled her through both the season's end and preseason training with her still-new coaching team of Matt Daly and Jean-Christophe Faurel, who've been working together with Gauff hired Daly in September.

"I think I just realized, like, the importance of winning or losing a match," she said. "As athletes, we get caught up and losing feels like the end of the world, and winning feels like something we should do, not something we should be grateful for. No one makes us feel like that except ourselves. I think I just realized it's never that important. If I can step off the court and say I tried my best, that's all I can ask for.

"I think every time I go onto the court, I just tell myself to try my best. If I miss a shot, most matches are decided by a few points. I think I just realize sometimes they're going to go my way and sometimes they're not."

A semifinalist in Melbourne last year before losing to Sabalenka, Gauff could face the World No.1 again in the same round next week. But first, she'll have to beat Kenin at a major for the first time. The older of the two Americans has beaten Gauff twice at majors: on her way to winning the Melbourne title five years ago, and in the first round at Wimbledon in 2023.