The biggest upset at this year's Paris Olympics happened in the third round as the second favorite on the women's side, Coco Gauff, lost to Donna Vekic in two sets.
The American arrived in Paris with a really strong chance of winning a medal. As one of the best players in the world, the only medal she was after was the gold medal, which she wanted badly.
That was her own words, and she looked like that in her first two matches in the French capital. However, in her third round, she couldn't follow up on those performances, losing to the 13th seed from Croatia.
The Croatian had a great run at Wimbledon, losing to Jasmine Paolini, and played superb tennis in the previous round to oust Bianca Andreescu. The start of this match was solid for her as well because she had a good first service game.
Gauff is probably the best athlete among tennis players capable of tracking down many balls on the courts, which on paper sounded bad for Vekic. The 20-year-old is very quick and moves well, and is generally a tremendous defensive player capable of getting every type of shot back.
That's a bad matchup for Vekic, who loves to play aggressively and generally thrives in matchups where both players hit the ball hard. That doesn't work that well against Gauff, who is a wall and can send all the balls back.
In fact, the only player who has been able to hit through Gauff consistently in recent years has been Iga Swiatek, and that's a standard very few can reach. Vekic, as great as she is, is nowhere close to that level yet and it showed early in this match.
Just after five games of play, Gauff was up 4-1, while Vekic had 13 unforced errors. That's too much, and it was almost three per game. Inconsistent hitting like that wasn't going to cut it, even though being aggressive generally was the right idea.
On the other hand, the second seed at the Olympic Games served well and wasn't trying to overhit because that's not her game. She correctly recognized what Vekic was trying to do and spotted that it wasn't working, so she guided her opponent into that trap.
The match turned around when Vekic started to hit better, and she broke back when Gauff tried to close out the set. The nightmare became real for the 2023 US Open winner when she dropped the first set in the tie-break after losing a 5-2 lead, losing the tie-break 7-9.
Vekic found her rhythm hitting-wise, and Gauff couldn't deal with it. Still, the American broke first in the second set, which was ideal for her to mount a comeback, until she lost the one-break advantage.
Her serve fell off quite a bit, and Vekic regularly outhit her, which has been an issue for her for some time now—good players outhitting her. She then fell behind after being broken once again, and third break of the set ended her singles stay in Paris, as Vekic won the match 7-6(7), 6-2 to take care of the biggest upset of this year's Olympic tennis tournament.
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