Coco Gauff is the first tennis player to carry the Olympic flag
Coco Gauff was chosen as the first tennis player in Olympic history to be the flag bearer and says she was “shocked” by the selection.
Emma Navarro made it through the quarterfinals with ease and reached the semifinals of the US Open for the first time in her life, but was defeated by the tournament’s number 2 seed in the first of two women’s singles matches on Thursday evening.
Navarro, seeded 13th, lost two sets (3:6; 6:7) to the second-best player in the world, two-time Australian Open champion Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus.
Navarro recovered from a 4-5 deficit in the second set to take a 6-5 lead before Sabalenka found her form, equalised at 6-6 and then won the tiebreaker.
Before tonight, the direct comparison between Navarro and Sabalenka was 1:1.
Had the 23-year-old Navarro overtaken Sabalenka, she might have faced another American in Saturday’s final.
Jessica Pegula, currently ranked number 4 in the world and seeded sixth in the tournament, will face Karolina Muchova in the second semi-final tonight.
Sabalenka played in the semifinals four years in a row and reached her first US Open final last year, where she lost to another American, Coco Gauff, who was knocked out of the tournament by Navarro this year.
Maria Francis is a Pennsylvania-based journalist who covers current affairs in the Mid-Atlantic region.
