Coco Gauff digs deep to beat Britain’s Francesca Jones

Coco Gauff was forced to dig deep on her Wimbledon return before she ended the hopes of Great Britain’s Francesca Jones with a straight-sets victory.

The American saw her career take off in 2019 when she reached the fourth round at SW19 as a 15-year-old and was back in the All England Club as one of the contenders for the title.

Yet Jones, on her main draw debut at Wimbledon, held her own and pushed the teenager all the way until her resistance was eventually broken with Gauff earning a 7-5 6-4 win.

Rain had forced the scheduled day one match to be put back 24 hours and a further downpour in the afternoon saw another delay added

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When Gauff and Jones did get under way, the football-mad Briton could have been forgiven for wondering what was going on across the capital at Wembley.

Since Gauff’s exploits two years ago, she had moved up to 23 in the world and made the quarter-finals at Roland Garros earlier this month but a lack of fluency troubled the right-hander who slipped plenty of times in the first set.