Coco Gauff lost in both women’s doubles and mixed doubles at the Paris Olympics on Wednesday, ending her first Summer Games just a day after her emotional exit from the singles competition.
“At the end of the day, it’s over,” the 20-year-old American said. “I’ll try to take the positive out of it and do better next time.”
Gauff and her U.S. teammate, Jessica Pegula, were the top-seeded women’s pair but were knocked out in the second round by the Czech team of Karolina Muchova and Linda Noskova with scores of 2-6, 6-4, 10-5 in a match tiebreaker in the afternoon.
Later that evening, Gauff and Taylor Fritz lost in mixed doubles with a 7-6 (2), 3-6, 10-8 defeat in another match tiebreaker to Gabby Dabrowski and Felix Auger-Aliassime from Canada.
In Olympic tennis, a first-to-10, win-by-two match tiebreaker replaces a traditional third set for all doubles matches.
On Tuesday, Gauff was beaten by Donna Vekic of Croatia in straight sets in the third round of singles.
Gauff, who was seeded second in that event, had a disagreement with the chair umpire over an officiating decision near the end of that match.
This brought an unexpected end to the Olympics for someone who was a U.S. flag bearer during the opening ceremony on Friday and had hoped to leave the City of Light with three medals. Instead, she finished 0 for 3.
“Obviously,” Gauff said, “I thought I had a good chance in all three events.”
This was Gauff’s first time at the Olympics; she was set to join the U.S. tennis team for Tokyo at age 17 three years ago but had to withdraw after testing positive for COVID-19 right before the flight to Japan.
Gauff came to France this time as one of the biggest stars in her sport. She won her first Grand Slam singles title at the U.S. Open last September and her first major doubles title at the French Open in June, although not with Pegula, who was injured, but with Katerina Siniakova from the Czech Republic.
