Gauff’s main emotion might well have been pride, but her relief at avoiding another early clay-court exit – after losing in the Stuttgart quarter-finals and Madrid last 16 – was also evident.<\/p>\n
Struggling with her footwork and misfiring with her forehand, Gauff was way short of her best in the opening two sets.<\/p>\n
But, after Jovic missed match point with a tight forehand into the net, the 17th ranked teenager became further distracted by a cut on her finger caused by an earlier fall on the red dirt.<\/p>\n
Gauff took full advantage by showing the indomitable spirit which has categorised her ascent to the top of the women’s game.<\/p>\n
A flustered Jovic was clearly feeling uncomfortable with her grip and it contributed to a host of errors as Gauff – who has said she is dealing with “tough” off-court issues at the moment – quickly turned the second set in her favour.<\/p>\n
Gauff still did not play cleanly in the decider, but knew the importance of simply getting the ball back into play with regularity and preying on Jovic’s problems.<\/p>\n
Jovic, who reached the Australian Open quarter-finals earlier this year, continued to hit loosely and her first serve plummeted – as the pair exchanged five breaks of serve – before Gauff steadied herself to win the final three games.<\/p>\n
“In my previous round I was not good mentally on the court and this was a complete 180. It shows I can continue to be positive in the most part,” Gauff told Sky Sports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gauff’s main emotion might well have been pride, but her relief at avoiding another early clay-court exit –…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":788983,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[62,1464,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-788982","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116556591978428007","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}