SHOWING chinks in their budding partnership, American Coco Gauff and Alex Eala failed to hold off the resilient Italian pair of Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini, who kept their title-retention bid on track early yesterday morning (Wednesday afternoon in Europe) with a tense 7-5, 6-3, 10-7 win in the Italian Open women’s singles quarterfinals in Rome.
With the hometown crowd rooting for them, the Errani-Paolini tandem escaped being 0-1 down in the opening set, climbing out from a 2-5 and love-40 deficit to break Eala’s serve in the eighth game on the way to completing the remarkable comeback.
Coming off a hard-fought 6-4, 7-6 (7-5) quarterfinals win over Russian Andrea Maleeva barely an hour earlier, Gauff looked tired at the start of the doubles match and was broken in the second game before raising her performance and combining with Eala to win the second set 6-3.
In the race-to-10 points super tie-breaker, the first-time partners wilted at crunch time to Errani and Paolini, who finally prevailed after one hour and 36 minutes of thrilling action at the packed Grand Stand Arena of the ForoItalico Tennis Center.
While Gauff, seeded fourth in the singles, will move on and is set to face Chinese Qinweng Zeng, a 6-4, 6-3 quarterfinal conqueror of world No. 1 and top seed ArynaSabalenka, in the semis, Eala will have more time to prepare for her French Open debut as a pro in the main draw.
The pretty Pinay southpaw drew a wild card at the famed courts of Roland Garros in the Grand Slam competition kicking off May 25 in the French capital of Paris.
But she won’t go home empty-handed, sharing the purse of 43,650 euros (around P2.718 million) and 215 WTA ranking points for reaching the quarterfinals.
