One week after Coco Gauff was born in Delray Beach, Florida, Kaia Kanepi played an ITF $50,000 event in St. Petersburg. The No.1 seed, she lost her second match to Ivana Lisjak in straight sets.

That was 2004, and Kanepi, an ascendant 18-year-old, would finish the year ranked No.226 among WTA players.

On Friday, Gauff – at 18, the youngest player remaining in the draw – meets Kanepi in an all-ages show, a third-round match that would send one of them into the second week of Roland Garros. Kanepi, at 36, was the oldest player entered in this year's draw and is more than twice Gauff’s age. She turns 37 in a few weeks.

WTA, photo courtesy Adam Pretty/Getty Images

Gauff, the No.18-seeded American, was a quarterfinalist here a year ago, losing to eventual champion Barbora Krejcikova, while Kanepi made the quarters in 2008 and, a decade ago, in 2012. With the draw wide open, anything seems possible. The six highest seeds in the bottom half are already gone: No.2 (Krejcikova), No.4 (Maria Sakkari), No.5 (Anett Kontaveit), No.6 (Ons Jabeur), No.10 (Garbiñe Muguruza) and No.12 (Emma Raducanu).

French Open: Scores | Order of play | Draw

“I’m most happy with my movement and being able to create depth and those opportunities to get short balls,” Gauff told reporters Wednesday. “I think that helped me a lot today. Yeah, the last time [versus Kanepi] it was a close match and I was able to pull that one through. I already know it’s going to be a pretty hard match.”

It couldn’t have been closer. In their only meeting to date, last year in Parma, Italy, Gauff escaped with a 7-6(6), 7-6(7) on her way to a second career title.

Estonia’s Kanepi upset Muguruza in the first round and is looking to collect her 20th Grand Slam victory against a seeded player in the first three rounds. Among active players, only Serena and Venus Williams (29 and 22, respectively) and Victoria Azarenka (21) have more.

Gauff, who won her first two matches in straight sets, is 16-10 this year and ranked No.23, exactly 23 spots ahead of Kanepi.

Upset Watch

No.23 Jil Teichmann over No.15 Victoria Azarenka: The only previous match went to Azarenka, 6-1, 6-2, at this year’s Australian Open. But while Azarenka is a two-time champion in Melbourne, she’s 7-6 at Roland Garros, with her best run coming nine years ago when she made the semifinals. This is only the second French Open for Teichmann, the 24-year-old Swiss, who has already won 17 matches in 2022 and is coming off a quarterfinal appearance in Rome and the semifinals in Madrid.

By the numbers

Angelique Kerber has now won 118 Grand Slam matches, but only 19 of them have come at Roland Garros. Her winning percentage at the French Open, while respectable at .576, falls well short of her overall mark of .690. That might explain why the 34-year-old has won the three other majors but has progressed only to the quarterfinals at Roland Garros, in 2012 and 2018.

When the No.21 seed meets Aliaksandra Sasnovich, she’ll be the overwhelming sentimental favorite. They met only nine days ago in the Round of 16 at Strasbourg, with Kerber winning 6-2, 3-6, 6-4 on the way to her fourth career clay title. Kerber saved two match points in a first-round victory against Magdalena Frech. Sasnovich, whose previous best in Paris was five trips to the second round, has never been this far. After losing her first matches in Charleston and Madrid, she qualified and won a main-draw match in both Rome and Strasbourg.

“Everyone knows that clay is not my favorite surface,” Kerber told reporters after defeating French wildcard Elsa Jacquemot 6-1, 7-6(2). “For me, this year I just try to play every single match and not looking too much ahead and just trying to keep it up. Of course it’s not an easy tournament for me when you look back. But I’m not looking back right now, just trying to be in the moment.”

And finally …

No.27 Amanda Anisimova made headlines with a first-round victory against four-time major champion Naomi Osaka, but Friday’s opponent, Karolina Muchova, also has a penchant for big-time wins.

The 25-year-old Czech Republic player previously knocked off No.2-ranked Osaka at Madrid in 2021, No.1 Ashleigh Barty at the 2021 Australian Open and No.3 Karolina Pliskova three years ago at Wimbledon – indeed, she is 4-0 against opponents ranked inside the Top 3. Muchova, a relatively late bloomer like her countrywoman Krejcikova, has been to the semifinals at the Australian Open, the quarterfinals at Wimbledon and the fourth round at the US Open – all in the past two years.

These two have never met.