{"id":110480,"date":"2025-05-18T01:33:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-18T01:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/110480\/"},"modified":"2025-05-18T01:33:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-18T01:33:08","slug":"coco-gauff-shows-true-colours-after-losing-italian-open-final-to-jasmine-paolini-tennis-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/110480\/","title":{"rendered":"Coco Gauff shows true colours after losing Italian Open final to Jasmine Paolini | Tennis | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After a tense loss in the Italian Open final, <a data-link-tracking=\"InArticle|Link\" title=\"Coco Gauff\" href=\"https:\/\/www.express.co.uk\/latest\/coco-gauff\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Coco Gauff<\/a> graciously praised her conqueror Jasmine Paolini despite experiencing a string of disappointing results herself. The American was beaten in straight sets by Paolini, as she continues to struggle to bounce back to her very best.<\/p>\n<p>Following the defeat, Gauff showed class, saying: &#8220;Congrats, Jasmine, on this incredible achievement. You&#8217;re an incredible person and player. It&#8217;s always tough playing you. Good luck in the doubles final. I hope you guys can take it home.&#8221; The aspiring Grand Slam champion, who briefly slipped down the WTA rankings, impressively bounced back into world No.3 after competing in Rome, despite losing to <a data-link-tracking=\"InArticle|Link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.express.co.uk\/latest\/aryna-sabalenka\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Aryna Sabalenka\u00a0<\/a> in the Madrid Open final and then again this weekend.<\/p>\n<p>She added: &#8220;Jasmine played great tennis today. I think it was one of her best levels today. I also didn&#8217;t play my best level. I think it&#8217;s both. It&#8217;s not to discredit my opponent. She forced me to play that way.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Yeah, maybe I could have served better and put more balls in the court, could play better. I definitely could and can. But she played to win today and she deserved to win.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Gauff&#8217;s return to form comes just as the French Open looms and she is determined to overcome her faltering start to the season. She continued: &#8220;I think just accepting the highs and lows. I think sometimes in sports you want to just stay on the high and kind of ride that wave, but especially with this sport, a season as long as tennis, it&#8217;s impossible to always be on that high wave, and there&#8217;s going to be some low moments, I think.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Just trying to stick through those tough moments and get better through them. Not feeling like the rest of the season is going to go that way. I feel like I&#8217;m able to turn it around. It&#8217;s happened before. I think it just takes one match or two matches to kind of get that confidence back.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When you&#8217;re coming off a good start to the season, you don&#8217;t look to maintain it. I feel like I try to treat each part of the season in different sections. So regardless of something good or bad happens, it&#8217;s a chance to reset.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Undeterred by her movement within the WTA rankings, Gauff remains focused on racking up Grand Slam wins, adding: &#8220;I&#8217;ve never been a rankings girl. Really, I want to just win Grand Slams.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My dad always said, &#8216;the number, the ranking will come with the Slams.&#8217; So I think for me, I&#8217;m looking more at winning Slams. And if I win a Slam this year and don&#8217;t become number one, I will be satisfied. I&#8217;ll be more satisfied than if I became number one and didn&#8217;t win a Slam.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This article originally appeared on <a data-link-tracking=\"InArticle|Link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.the-express.com\/sport\/tennis\/172007\/coco-gauff-true-colors-italian-open-loss\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Express US<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a tense loss in the Italian Open final, Coco Gauff graciously praised her conqueror Jasmine Paolini despite&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110481,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[6740,25564,49274,14647,79,1068,31635,5838,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-110480","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-coco-gauff","9":"tag-italian-open","10":"tag-italian-open-final","11":"tag-jasmine-paolini","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-tennis","14":"tag-tennis-section","15":"tag-tennis-news","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114526264141764763","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}