Tennis
Coco Gauff, Jessica Pegula headline U.S. Women’s Olympic Tennis Team heading for Paris
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The USTA announced its 2024 USA Olympics tennis teams on Thursday and they pack a Florida punch.
The USA tennis headliner in Paris next month is Delray Beach’s Coco Gauff, who will compete in her first Olympiad after backing out of the 2020 Tokyo Games days before when she contracted COVID-19.
Gauff, who moved up to No. 2 in the world after her French Open semifinal appearance, will be joined by her doubles partner and South Florida neighbor, Jessica Pegula, who has lived in Boca Raton since she was 13. Pegula, ranked fifth in the world, is coming off a neck injury and missed the French Open.
The 20-year-old Gauff and Pegula, 30, will be joined by fellow Floridian Danielle Collins, a St. Petersburg resident who is enjoying a smashing final season to her career. Collins, who won the Miami Open in March, announced that this will be her final year on the WTA Tour.
The women’s coach will be longtime Federation Cup leader Kathy Rinaldi, who is from Stuart.
At the Miami Open in March, Gauff said of the Olympics: “The goal is to medal and hopefully come home with gold. But I really want to enjoy the experience and not make it so much pressure like other tournaments. It’s probably one, twice, maybe three times I do this in my career. I want to enjoy it, especially the first time around.”
The women’s team is rounded out by rising star and native New Yorker Emma Navarro, the 23-year-old former NCAA champion from the University of Virginia who made the Round of 16 at the French Open, and 11th-ranked doubles player Desirae Krawczyk, of Palm Desert, California.
The USA men’s team may not fare as well as the women at the Summer Olympics that begin July 27 and will be played on the red clay of Roland-Garros. (The USA men didn’t have a player who went past the fourth round at the French.)
Taylor Fritz, Tommy Paul on US Men’s team
The men’s lineup will include No. 12 Taylor Fritz, who lives in Miami, and No. 13 Tommy Paul, a longtime Boca Raton resident.
Chris Eubanks, the affable former Georgia Tech player who burst onto the scene last year and has lifted his ranking to 44th, was also named to Team USA.
Filling out the roster are No. 53 Marcos Giron, world doubles No. 6 Rajeev Ram and No. 15Austin Krajicek, who is from Tampa. The team’s coach will be former doubles superstar Bob Bryan.
According to the USTA, Ram/Krajicek and Fritz/Paul will be the doubles pairings. There is also a mixed doubles team that will be announced later with Gauff/Fritz being the most attractive possibility.
Fritz and Paul are close friends. The only surprising omission from the squad was U.S. Open semifinalist Ben Shelton, who played at the University of Florida.
The women’s doubles will feature Gauff/Pegula and Collins/Krawczyk. Gauff is coming off a French Open doubles championship when she teamed with Czech Republic’s Katerina Siniakova because of Pegula’s injury.
Clearly, Gauff would love to play in all three events, singles, women’s doubles and mixed.
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At the Australian Open in January, she said: “One of the goals I wrote down on my vision thing, vision note, in my phone, was to win a medal in the Olympics. Ideally, I would want to play all three. We’ll have to see where I fall in the lineup ranking-wise and all of that. That definitely is a priority. The Olympics have been a priority in both singles and doubles.”
Coco said any type of medal would do, then added: “Obviously, I want to win in singles. But I feel like I would appreciate it just as much, whether it was in singles or doubles.”
More: Carling Bassett-Seguso has traded tennis for pickleball – and she’s never been happier
The U.S. has won 24 Olympic medals (14 gold) since tennis returned as a full-medal sport in 1988 — more than any nation.
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