In a battle of teen prodigies, Coco Gauff takes the wind out of Mirra Andreeva's sails

WATCH: Coco Gauff defeats Mirra Andreeva in the 2023 Roland Garros third round

If you’d like a one-sentence summation of Coco Gauff’s 6-7 (5), 6-1, 6-1 win over Mirra Andreeva at Roland Garros on Saturday, the victor had one ready right after the match.

“I knew the game plan in the first set,” Gauff said, “and I tried to execute it in the second and third sets.”

That’s what made the difference in this match: Gauff stuck with her plan through thick and thin, and eventually made it work; Andreeva, meanwhile, went away not just from her tactics, but from the positive mindset that she showed during the long opening set.

This was a much-anticipated, all-teen, all-prodigy contest. Gauff broke though as a 15-year-old at Wimbledon 2019; Andreeva did the same as a 15-year-old in Madrid this spring. They practiced together before this tournament, and Mirra talked about how nice Coco was to her, and praised her “beautiful face.”

For a set, they also appeared to be well-matched as players. Andreeva showed more presence and poise, and a better-measured forehand, than she had just last month in Madrid. While Gauff tried to force the action, and ended up spraying the ball, Andreeva maintained a veteran’s calm in the important moments at the end of the first set. It was the Russian who was placing her down-the-line ground strokes in the corners, and the American who was missing overambitious drop shots and easy second-serve returns.

Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, the wind came out of Andreeva’s sails completely. At the end of the first set, she was warned for slapping a ball into the crowd. After the set was over, instead of capitalizing on her momentum, she took a bathroom break. Instead of playing with more confidence to start the second, she slammed her racquet into the court, began to rush from one serve to the next, and let her shoulders slump. More importantly, she stopped hitting out on her ground strokes, and started giving Gauff more opportunities to attack, especially on second serves.

Whatever negative vibe Andreeva was putting down, Gauff picked it up quickly.

“Honestly, at the end of the first set it was weird,” Gauff said. "I had a feeling that, I don’t know if it was the energy she was giving me off or anything, wasn't really quite anything she did, but I had a feeling that, even though I lost that set, I felt like I won the set."

She took immediate and thorough advantage. Rather than back off after missing so many balls early, Gauff continued to go after her returns, to take big cracks at her crosscourt forehand, to step inside the baseline and push Andreeva behind hers. Gauff even came up with what to me was the most surreal shot of the tournament, a backhand overhead that she somehow reflexed with enough power to send the ball over Andreeva’s head and out of her reach. Unfortunately, Andreeva was moving so quickly between points by then, that we never got to see a replay of how exactly Gauff made that overhead—which I associate with Guillermo Vilas and his tree-trunk left arm—happen.

Gauff was hesitant to give Andreeva advice afterward, but she did say that “if the body language after every point keeps showing, yeah, it gives you confidence.”

As for Andreeva, she said she spent too much time dwelling on what had already happened, and what she couldn’t fix.

“I was trying to play, but something didn’t work out and I got disappointed, upset, and not really was thinking about the match. I was thinking about my mistakes,” she said.

That’s an error a 16-year-old will make—but so will a 19-year-old, a 25-year-old, and a 30-year-old. Andreeva will learn. Today she could look across the net and see a “beautiful face,” a future friend and rival, and a role model for the long road ahead.