COCO Gauff’s Wimbledon opener was moved from Centre Court to No1 Court.
The American superstar had been due to open her Wimbledon 2025 campaign against Dayana Yastremska last on Centre.
Coco Gauff’s match was moved from Centre Court[/caption]
But with previous matches taking a long time to complete, and the All England Club operating with a strict 11pm curfew, the decision was made shortly after 7pm local time to move Gauff’s match to No1 Court.
Centre Court began at 1:30pm with reigning champion Barbora Krejcikova’s three-set victory over Alexandra Eala, which took two hours and 13 minutes to complete.
Then came the resumption of last night’s match between Alexander Zverev and Arthur Rinderknech.
Zverev and Rinderknech began level at 6-7 7-6, and went on to play three more long sets before the latter finally completed the upset 6-4 in the fifth.
With Novak Djokovic still to play against Alexandre Muller, it was looking as though it would be a struggle to also fit in Gauff’s match on Centre Court before the curfew.
On No1 Court, meanwhile, play had flown by.
And when Sebastian Baez retired against Jack Draper at around 7pm, all originally scheduled matches on that court had been completed.
Rather than leave it empty, tournament chiefs smartly decided to switch Gauff’s match over, in order to give her the best chance to complete it prior to the curfew.
The recent Roland Garros champion was taking on Ukrainian star Dayana Yastremska.
Gauff won the French Open just 24 days ago, making it a tight turnaroud.
In that time, the 21-year-old lost 6-3 6-3 to China’s Wang Xinyu in the first round in Berlin.
On the quick transition from clay to grass, Gauff said ahead of Wimbledon: “Well, before Berlin I only hit twice before my first match.
“So I figured I wasn’t going to do the best there. Yeah, I fell a couple times during that match. I was, like, I definitely need to get on the movement.
“After that, I kind of did a lot more fitness on court.
“More movement drills, things like that on court. After that, it’s just kind of refining certain things, like just getting used to playing lower.
“A lot of people like to use a slice here, so just working on playing and hitting more slices and playing more slices.
“Little things like that that I think will make a difference in the match.”
Gauff went into the match leading her head-to-head with Yastremska 3-0.
The pair last met in Madrid back in April, with Gauff winning 0-6 6-2 7-5.
Wimbledon has always been Gauff’s weakest slam, with the American having never gone beyond the fourth round.
