Former US Open champion Coco Gauff has stumbled into the second round of the tennis Grand Slam, squeezing past Australia’s Ajla Tomljanovic in an error-strewn three-hour battle.Third seed Gauff punched her ticket to the second round on Tuesday, after overcoming a litany of self-inflicted errors to win 6-4, 6-7 (2/7), 7-5 in a match that lasted 2hr 57min.“It was a tough match. Ajla was tough; she was getting so many balls back,” 2023 winner Gauff said after her win.“It wasn’t the best but I’m happy to get through to the next round.”Gauff, the reigning French Open champion, had prepared for the US Open by shaking up her coaching team on the eve of the tournament in an effort to fix her shaky service game, replacing coach Matt Daly with Gavin MacMillan, a biomechanics specialist.However , on the evidence of Tuesday night, the 21-year-old American still has plenty to work on if she is to have any realistic chance of mounting a deep run in New York.Gauff finished with a whopping 59 unforced errors and 10 double faults, and her serve was broken six times. She heads to the second round knowing that a more ruthless opponent than Tomljanovic might have punished those mistakes.As it was, Tomljanovi …
