By JOHN PYE AP Sports Writer
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Coco Gauff and Venus Williams could meet in the second round of the Australian Open, another potential chapter in a tennis tale that started with a 15-year-old on her Grand Slam debut beating a seven-time major winner at Wimbledon.
Gauff thanked Williams for being such an inspiration for her career after that win at the All England Club in 2019, saying “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for her.”
She followed it up with a first-round win at the Australian Open in 2020.
Now she’s the No. 3 seed and a two-time major winner. The 45-year-old Williams has a wild-card entry for the Australian Open, where she’s playing for the first time in five years.
The tournament starts Sunday at Melbourne Park. When the draw was conducted Thursday, Gauff was drawn to open against No. 91-ranked Kamilla Rakhimova and No. 576-ranked Williams — who made her Australian Open debut in 1998 and has twice reached the final — was drawn to face No. 68-ranked Olga Danilovic in the first round.
Williams is set to become the oldest woman to compete in an Australian Open main draw, surpassing the record previously held by Japan’s Kimiko Date, who was 44 when she lost in the first round at Melbourne Park in 2015.
To have any chance of facing Gauff again, she needs to do something she hasn’t done in 2026: record a win. In the last two weeks, Williams played tournaments in New Zealand and in Hobart, losing in the first round at both.
After a 6-4, 6-3 win over Williams on Tuesday, Tatjana Maria said it was a tough one because “everyone loves Venus. I love her, too.”
Gauff and Williams are in the same half of the draw as top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka, who won back-to-back Australian Open titles before losing last year’s final to Madison Keys.
Sabalenka, who opened her season with a title in Brisbane last week, has a potential third-round meeting against 2021 U.S. Open winner Emma Raducanu.
Defending champion Keys, who lost her quarterfinal match at the Adelaide International to rising Canadian star Victoria Mboko in three sets on Thursday, was drawn into the same quarter as No. 6 Jessica Pegula, and No. 4 Amanda Anisimova.
No. 2-ranked Iga Świątek, seeking a career Grand Slam with her first title at Melbourne Park, is in the bottom quarter on that side of the draw and has a potential fourth-round match against four-time major winner Naomi Osaka.
Jannik Sinner and Novak Djokovic landed in the same half of the draw, setting up a potential semifinal between the defending champion and the 24-time major winner.
Djokovic, who has won 10 Australian titles but hasn’t gone past the semifinals at Melbourne Park since 2023, played an exhibition against Frances Tiafoe on Rod Laver Arena hours after the draw was made. He withdrew last week from a warmup tournament in Adelaide to give himself more time to be ready for the Open.
Top-ranked Carlos Alcaraz is on the opposite side to Sinner and Djokovic, and has Tiafoe and local hope and sixth-seeded Alex De Minaur in his quarter of the draw.
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AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis