Coco Gauff extended her winning streak to five matches by beating British player Katie Boulter in the opening round of the 2023 Canadian Open.
Gauff had a tremendous week in Washington that concluded with a strong performance in the final against Maria Sakkari. It was a pretty confident display from Gauff, who brought the same confidence to the WTA 1000 in Montreal, starting off with a win.
Her new coaching setup worked really well in Washington, and the formula is proving good in Montreal as well. She once again brought that aggressive play, and it put Boulter in a tough spot pretty early on. The Brit found herself down 0-3 and never recovered from that despite managing to break the serve of Gauff.
Boulter actually defeated Gauff in their previous match but that was two years ago and Gauff had all the answers in this one. She rarely allowed her opponent to dictate anything which is both a new mindset she adopted recently but also the best way to attack Boulter.
While quite solid from the baseline, the Brit doesn't do that well when you put a lot of pressure on her. She was better with that in the second set getting used to it by then but still didn't control the match that well from the baseline.
Despite having multiple chances, Boulter broke Gauff only once in the entire match, and that was simply not good enough, especially considering how well Gauff played on return. Using chances ultimately was the difference between the players, as Gauff managed to find a better level when she needed it.
She did that both in the first and second set, finishing it off after about 70 minutes of play. The final score was 6-2, 6-2 for the American, who moves on to face either Marketa Vondrousova or Caroline Wozniacki in the next round.
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