By the numbers: Gauff serves her way to the third round in Melbourne

Two days after earning her 250th career match win, Coco Gauff added No. 251 at the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz level with a second-round victory over Olga Danilovic in Melbourne.

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She defeated the Serb 6-2, 6-2 in 1 hour and 17 minutes at Margaret Court Arena to reach the Australian Open third round for the fourth straight year.

And she did it with the help of some new tools in her arsenal.

“We’ll do two minutes at the end of practice with them, and then honestly, the drop shot, it’s always a bad idea in my head,” Gauff said in her on-court interview. “And then I make it and I’m like, ‘Okay, that was good.’ I saw Carlos (Alcaraz) yesterday, and I was like, I’m trying to drop shot like him.

“In my first match, I won like seven drop shot points, which I don’t think I’ve ever done. And then today, I won, like all of them that I did, so it’s a good shot until I miss it. My coach told me, ‘Don't go drop shot on pressure points,’ and I think almost every time I did a drop shot today was on a pressure point and it worked.”

With the win, Gauff will face fellow American Hailey Baptiste in the third round in what will be their second career meeting and first since 2023.

But first, the No. 3 seed had to get past Danilovic, who entered with momentum following a high-profile opening win over Venus Williams. Gauff ultimately handled the challenge behind the strength of her serve, and when she’s serving well, good luck to anyone on the other side of the net.

She used that serve, along with her trademark return pressure to race out to a 5-0 lead. Danilovic gave her a bit of trouble late in the set, holding to get on the board and earning her lone break of the match, but Gauff broke right back to close out the opening set.

The second set followed a similar script. Gauff secured an early break, cruised to a 3-0 lead and broke again in the final game to finish the match.

Here’s Gauff’s win by the numbers:

1: With her first win over Danilovic, Gauff continues her dominance against lefties. She has lost just one of her last 16 matches against left-handed opponents (to Diana Shnaider in Toronto 2024).

2: Break points faced by Gauff. Both came in the lone game she was broken late in the first set. She faced none in her other seven service games.

17: Break points held by Gauff. She converted 5 of 17 and allowed Danilovic to hold serve only three times in eight service games.

39: Consecutive Grand Slam matches Gauff has won after taking the first set. Her last loss in that scenario came to Amanda Anisimova at Wimbledon 2022.

84: Percentage of first-serve points won by Gauff (26 of 31), 16 percentage points higher than the WTA Tour average.