Gauff drops first match since French Open title

Newly crowned French Open champion Coco Gauff was stunned successful her instrumentality to enactment Thursday, losing to Chinese qualifier Wang Xinyu 6-3, 6-3 astatine the Berlin Open.

The second-ranked Gauff, who won astatine Roland Garros little than 2 weeks agone for her 2nd Grand Slam title, amassed 25 unforced errors and 7 treble faults successful the defeat.

Gauff had a bye to the 2nd circular astatine the grass-court tournament, a warmup for Wimbledon.

Wang, ranked No. 49, said she would person been pleased conscionable with the archetypal set, considering the level of her opponent.

"After I won the archetypal set, I conscionable told myself, 'OK, let's instrumentality a infinitesimal and bask this, I'm playing the French Open champion, and I won the archetypal set,'" Wang said successful her on-court interview. "No substance however the 2nd and 3rd go, I was like, 'OK, let's conscionable bask it for a second.'

"I'm truly blessed with however I played today. I was serving bully and putting a batch of unit connected the return, particularly second-serve return."

Gauff looked uncomfortable connected the slick writer and was breached successful the seventh game. Wang clinched the acceptable aft Gauff double-faulted connected deuce and past sank a dropshot into the nett connected acceptable point.

Gauff broke to spell 3-1 up successful the 2nd set, but Wang ran disconnected 5 games successful a enactment for the victory.

Aryna Sabalenka, besides playing for the archetypal clip since losing to Gauff successful the French Open final, completed a 6-2, 7-6 (6) triumph implicit Rebeka Masarova to scope the quarterfinals, concluding a lucifer that had been suspended Wednesday due to the fact that of slippery conditions.

Sabalenka had been a acceptable up Wednesday erstwhile play was stopped aft tourney officials said the tribunal was getting excessively slippery with humidity rising aft sunset.

When the lucifer resumed Thursday, the 27-year-old was breached astatine the commencement of the 2nd acceptable and recovered herself 3-1 and 4-2 down. She kept her cool, however, and broke backmost with a good volley to unit a tiebreak.

Sabalenka squandered 2 lucifer points earlier sealing triumph astatine her adjacent accidental erstwhile Masarova sank a midcourt forehand into the net. She volition adjacent look Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan.

Marketa Vondrousova, the 2023 Wimbledon champion, needed 3 sets and 2 hours, 20 minutes, to interruption the absorption of Diana Shnaider.

Vondrousova, who was 6-5 and 30-0 up successful the 2nd set, precocious with a 6-3, 6-7 (3), 6-3 triumph and volition look fortunate loser Ons Jabeur, a two-time Wimbledon finalist, successful the quarterfinals.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.