Cocciaretto: Play with the heart, not with the brain

But as she addressed the crowd on Court Suzanne-Lenglen after beating Samsonova, Cocciaretto had a surprise up her sleeve in the hopes of reeling them in even further. 

"Bonjour, Paris," Cocciaretto began as the crowd cheered, breaking into the animated giggles and big grin that are quickly becoming something of a trademark. In expressive, if Italian-accented, French, she went on to confess to three-time Roland-Garros champion Mats Wilander that even though she studied the language in school, she still wants to be able to speak it better.

Leaving any allegedly spotty linguistics aside, Cocciaretto’s comfort level on Paris’ terre battue has been obvious. After losing the first set against Haddad Maia, who reached the Roland-Garros semi-finals last year, Cocciaretto has won six in row in her three victories. Though she found herself two points away from losing the opener against Samsonova after a hot start, something inside her clicked and another big win became almost automatic.

"I think I played unbelievable the first games, and after, I was overthinking,” she continued, “so I said to myself, 'Play with the heart, and not with the brain!’”

This isn’t Cocciaretto’s first Roland-Garros milestone, though: twelve months ago she scored her first career top 10 win in Paris, against two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova, to kick off the tournament on her way to her first Grand Slam third round. Now, she’s the youngest Italian woman to make the fourth round at the tournament since Francesca Schiavone more than 20 years ago. 

While she’s a newcomer to this stage at a major, Cocciaretto, who hails from Ancona on the east coast of central Italy, has been coming into form in the clay-court spring. She snapped a three-match losing streak with a three-set win in the first round at home in Rome and reached the quarter-finals at the WTA 250 in Rabat, Morocco before coming to Roland-Garros. She won her first career WTA singles title on the surface last summer in Lausanne, Switzerland.

“I love the courts here. [They] remind me a lot [of] the courts where I was born. So I think for this, and also I have very good memories of when I was a kid watching on TV all the players that playing Roland-Garros, Italian players, for example, but I think I love the courts, for sure,” Cocciaretto told reporters after despatching Samsonova.

“It's a period of the year, I think, because I play [on it for] four months and I get experience. I play with a lot of players, so I come here with more confidence.”

In 2001, the then-20-year-old Schiavone went all the way to the Roland-Garros quarter-finals. If Cocciaretto will want to match that feat, she’ll have to earn her biggest win yet and knock out No.3 seed and 2022 Roland-Garros finalist Coco Gauff. The two have played twice previously, on hard courts – in Guadalajara two years ago and in Dubai in February, and Gauff won both.

Though the American has lost just once to a player ranked outside the WTA’s top 50 since the 2022 Australian Open, she isn’t looking past the challenge that the Italian poses.  

“No matter what the score is, she's not giving up until the last point,” Gauff said, adding, “She fights, all the time.”

Cocciaretto agrees. The key for the rematch, she says? Staying patient and “not doing the same errors” she felt undid her on prior occasions against possibly the women’s tour’s best defender.  

“But for sure it will be a very, very tough match. Of course, she's one of the best players in the world,” Cocciaretto continued. “So I think that I will enjoy the match but trying to be aggressive, trying to do my game, and just fight every point. That's it.”