Coco Gauff comes back at the US Open and beats Elina Svitolina. Emma Navarro is next

Coco Gauff has come back to beat Elina Svitolina 3-6, 6-3, 6-3 and reach the fourth round of the U.S. Open Coco Gauff comes back at the US Open and beats Elina Svitolina. She was not sure exactly how many points in a row she’d dropped — 11, it turns out — to give away the first set against Elina Svitolina in the U.S. Open’s third round on Friday. Here, then, is what was entirely clear to Gauff at that moment: “I needed a reset.” So before the second set, the 20-year-old from Florida went to the bathroom, changed part of her outfit and splashed water on her face. Then Gauff went back on court and extended the defense of her first Grand Slam title by turning things around to beat the 27th-seeded Svitolina 3-6, 6-3, 6-3. “Felt like a new person coming out,” the third-seeded Gauff said. “I just didn’t want to leave the court with any regrets.” Novak Djokovic, the other defending champion, was shocked in the third round with a 6-4, 6-4, 2-6, 6-4 loss to 28th-seeded Alexei Popyrin. 20 seed France Tiafoe, who outlasted 13th-seeded Ben Shelton 4-6, 7-5, 6-7 (5), 6-4, 6-3 across 4 hours, 3 minutes to reach the fourth round at Flushing Meadows for the fifth consecutive year. After making mistake after mistake early on at Arthur Ashe Stadium, Gauff managed to reel off nine of 11 games in one stretch and won again despite losing the opening set, something she did three times en route to claiming the 2023 trophy at Flushing Meadows, including in the final against Aryna Sabalenka. It gave me a lot of confidence,” Gauff said, “just because it felt like déjà vu a little bit.” On Sunday, Gauff will face No. 13 Emma Navarro, one of her teammates at the Paris Olympics, for a berth in the quarterfinals. “I did a good job of neutralizing her serve and just playing really aggressive from the baseline and pushing back against her groundstrokes,” Navarro, who is from South Carolina and won an NCAA title for Virginia, said about that matchup last month. “And then always getting one more ball back in the court.” Navarro advanced Friday with a 6-4, 4-6, 6-3 victory over No. 29 Ekaterina Alexandrova 2-6, 6-1, 6-2 in the latest-starting women’s match in U.S. Open history and will face No. Vekic beat Gauff in the third round at the Olympics, part of Gauff’s recent drought against top-50 foes. Such a contrast to a year ago, when Gauff won 18 of 19, and 12 in a row, along the way to two tuneup titles on hard courts and then the championship at the U.S. Open that made her the first U.S. teenager to triumph at Flushing Meadows since Serena Williams in 1999. By the conclusion of one set against Svitolina, it seemed as if another loss might be in the offing. And something else changed, at the behest of her coaches: Gauff got the partisan crowd more involved. But to be fair, I didn’t play the way that I wanted to play. … Then she started to be more alive,” said Svitolina, a three-time Slam semifinalist. Everything began to change for Gauff on Friday after 1 hour, 10 minutes, when she broke to lead 4-2 in the second set, smacking a cross-court forehand winner. Soon that set belonged to Gauff, who closed it with a 94 mph ace, shook a fist and shouted. In the third, with UConn women’s basketball stars Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd sitting in her guest box at Ashe, Gauff broke right away, then held to go up 2-0 with the help of one 38-stroke point that she took when Svitolina sent a backhand wide. Soon it was 5-1 for Gauff, whose only late wobble came when she served for the match at 5-2. “I’m glad that I had that match,” Gauff said, “because I think it just makes me match-tough and gets me ready, probably, for future challenges.” ___ AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis – This Summarize was created by Neural News AI (V1). Source: https://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory/coco-gauff-us-open-title-defense-alive-coming-113281033