The second seed on Tuesday started an odd French Open campaign when she stepped on court without any rackets. The 20-year-old American swiftly put the mix-up behind her as she dispatched unseeded Australian Olivia Gadecki 6-2, 6-2 in the Roland Garros first round.
The 2022 runner-up smiled sheepishly upon realizing what she had done. She looked into her bag and found nothing but drinks. “Honestly, I thought they put the rackets in the bag,” Gauff said in a post-match interview with Sloane Stephens on TNT. “I opened the first zipper-no rackets. Second zipper-still nothing. I was like, ‘Oh my God.'”
The Gauff team scrambled to fetch the rackets from the locker room, causing a brief delay to the midday match. Once the match went on, the Madrid and Rome finalist shot out of the blocks, claiming the first three games in a blink of an eye. She did lose her serve once but rebounded firmly to hold for a battling first set.
