Coco Gauff Warned Over Overthinking Habit Despite Reaching Italian Open Quarter-Finals for Third Straight Year

Coco Gauff has advanced to the quarter-finals of the Italian Open for the third consecutive year, but her route through the draw has drawn scrutiny from former professional and Sky Sports commentator Annabel Croft, who identified a troubling pattern in the 21-year-old’s performances.

Gauff’s match against Iva Jovic was far from straightforward. The American faced match points in the second set before recovering to seal her place in the last eight in Rome. It was not an isolated incident — in her previous round against Solana Sierra, Gauff had fallen a break down in the deciding set before turning the match around.

Speaking during Sky Sports commentary on Gauff’s win over Jovic, Croft was candid about her concerns. “I think it’s a little bit inexplicable to be honest with you because it’s sort of a pattern which is in her matches. As I said before, I’m not even sure if she knows why this happens,” Croft said. “Because she tries to address it all, and there are moments where it becomes solid. It’s a mind thing isn’t it? The worst thing in tennis is that you overthink. We hear players in interviews talking about that, they don’t want to be overthinking. Suddenly there are patches where she starts to overthink the techniques. Then it starts to go away and she plays with freedom, without thinking. At the moment it’s sort of a concentration thing isn’t it?”

Despite the concerns raised by Croft, the underlying statistics at the Italian Open tell a compelling story of consistency. Gauff’s quarter-final appearance in Rome in 2025 marks her third successive last-eight finish at the event, having reached the final in 2025 and the semi-final in 2024. In doing so, she becomes the youngest player to achieve three consecutive quarter-final appearances at the tournament since Iga Swiatek accomplished the same between 2021 and 2023.

Gauff has also entered a select group in American tennis history. She is the youngest American since Mary Joe Fernandez to reach three straight Italian Open quarter-finals, a milestone Fernandez achieved between 1991 and 1993 — a stretch of more than three decades ago.

Her next opponent in the quarter-finals is Russian teenager Mirra Andreeva, against whom Gauff holds a perfect record on the WTA Tour. Gauff has won all four of their previous meetings, including two Grand Slam victories — eliminating Andreeva at both Roland Garros and the US Open in 2023.

The head-to-head record in 2025 offers further encouragement for the American. Gauff has already defeated Andreeva twice this season, with both victories coming on clay — the surface on which they will meet again in Rome. Notably, one of those wins came at the Italian Open itself last year, when Gauff went on to reach her first-ever final at the Rome tournament.

With that run of dominance over Andreeva and the momentum of her comeback victories in the current draw, Gauff will be targeting what would be her maiden Italian Open title. Whether she can do so while managing the mental fluctuations that Croft has flagged remains the central question surrounding her campaign in Rome.