By HOWARD FENDRICH AP Tennis Writer

NEW YORK — Things were not going well for Coco Gauff at the U.S. Open on Friday night.

Her shots were off. She was struggling to hold serve. She dropped a set. All the while, Gauff was talking to her coaches, Brad Gilbert and Pere Riba. Talking to herself. Slapping her thigh or putting her palm to her face.

And when the sixth-seeded Gauff needed to lift her game, when she needed to get headed in the right direction before it was too late, she did just that. Did she ever. Asking for more noise from the partisan fans at Arthur Ashe stadium – and, naturally, getting it – Gauff grabbed the last 10 games for a 3-6, 6-3, 6-0 victory over No. 32 Elise Mertens to reach the fourth round at Flushing Meadows.

“The energy today definitely helped me. I felt you guys,” said Gauff, a 19-year-old from Florida. “I played every point my hardest.”

The 2022 French Open runner-up won for the 14th time in her past 15 matches, all on hard courts.

That stretch follows a first-round exit at Wimbledon in July and includes the two biggest titles of Gauff’s career.

This was also her second win this week after falling behind by a set – and the ninth time she has produced that sort of a turnaround in a Grand Slam match.

“The three-setters show everybody else that I’m not going down without a fight,” said Gauff, who made it to the quarterfinals in New York a year ago.

To return to that round, she will need to beat Caroline Wozniacki, a 33-year-old who is playing in her third event since coming out of retirement. Wozniacki won the 2018 Australian Open and twice was the runner-up at the U.S. Open before walking away from tennis 3½ years ago to start a family.

For Gauff, the beginning of the second set was key.

After Mertens, a 27-year-old Belgian who reached the final four at the Australian Open five years ago, held to go up 1-0, she held five break points in an 18-point Gauff service game. But Gauff held steady there. Then, with Mertens leading 3-2 in that set, Gauff really began to heed the advice of Gilbert, who could be heard repeating various phrases to her: “Be positive; be energetic here” or “Be physical now, every point” or “Just got to stay with her.”

And Mertens provided an opening. She sailed a backhand long, then sent a rushed forehand wide to hand over a break and a 4-3 lead. Gauff turned to her guest box and punched the air, then motioned to the raucous fans to get louder.

Facing a break point in the next game, Gauff delivered a forehand that clipped the net tape and landed in for a winner. She puffed her cheeks and exhaled. She eventually held there to go up 5-3 in that set, which soon was hers.

The third set was never much of a contest.

Gauff kept playing cleaner, going from 23 unforced errors over the first two sets to just two in the last.

And Mertens faltered. After eight unforced errors in the first set, she made 31 the rest of the way.

“After I lost that first set,” Gauff said, “I told myself: There’s … a lot of the match to play.”

Wozniacki’s comeback to tennis and the U.S. Open rolled on with a 4-6, 6-3, 6-1 victory over American Jennifer Brady, another player making a return to the game after a yearslong absence.

The 33-year-old from Denmark raised her fists in the air and glanced over to her husband in the stands when she closed out the match to move into the Round of 16.

“To actually be here (at) Arthur Ashe Stadium with all of you supporting me is a dream come true,” she said in her post-match interview. “What an honor this is.”

Wozniacki said she wouldn’t start thinking about her next match until after she went home and celebrated with her 2-year-old daughter Olivia and 10-month-old son, James.

Now ranked 623rd, Wozniacki needed a wild card to get into the U.S. Open main draw and believes she still has what it takes to make a deep run.

Wozniacki’s opponent, Brady, is making her own return to the game after two years away from the tour with injuries, including a fracture in her right knee and a tear in her left foot.

AMERICAN MEN IN THE MIX

When Tommy Paul was a kid growing up in Greenville, North Carolina, his family would drive the 500 or so miles up to New York the week before the U.S. Open to watch qualifying matches – “It was free,” he notes – and catch a glimpse of some pros practicing.

A couple of times, according to Paul, those treks involved a visit to an emergency room on the tournament grounds: his sister was bitten by a poisonous spider; his mother passed out and hit her head after seeing a player get badly injured.

“Every year,” Paul said, “we always had something terrible happen.”

This trip to Flushing Meadows is going far more smoothly so far for Paul – and other American men. The 26-year-old Paul, the No. 14 seed, earned a debut appearance in the fourth round at the U.S. Open by hitting 15 aces and getting broken just once during a 6-1, 6-0, 3-6, 6-3 victory over No. 21 Alejandro Davidovich Fokina of Spain in Arthur Ashe Stadium on Friday.

“I was kind of, like, ‘Really, they’re putting me on Ashe?’ I knew there was a pretty strong schedule of people,” said Paul, who never before had played in the 23,000-seat main stadium. “I was kind of surprised. … Hopefully I’ll be back many more times.”

That’s bound to happen if he keeps playing like this. Paul is part of a group of 20-something American men making moves on tour, and at this hard-court tournament, against a backdrop of a 20-year drought since the last major tennis championship for a man from the United States.

“These guys are all such good friends. They grew up together. They’ve trained together. They’ve played on teams together. They know each other’s games so well. And they see each other as equals in a lot of ways,” U.S. Davis Cup captain Bob Bryan said. “And when one of that group is making a dent on the tour, it’s only natural that the others start to believe, as well.”

At least one American is guaranteed a spot in the quarterfinals, because Paul’s next opponent is unseeded Ben Shelton, a 20-year-old from Florida. Shelton advanced Friday by defeating Aslan Karatsev of Russia, 6-4, 3-6, 6-2, 6-0, with the help of 26 aces.

Also into the fourth round are No. 9 seed Taylor Fritz, a 25-year-old from San Diego, and No. 10 Frances Tiafoe, a 25-year-old from Maryland. Fritz overwhelmed Czech qualifier Jakub Mensik, who turned 18 on Friday, 6-1, 6-2, 6-0; Tiafoe was a 4-6, 6-2, 6-3, 7-6 (6) winner against No. 22 Adrian Mannarino of France.

A fifth U.S. man can join them when wild-card entry Michael Mmoh plays Jack Draper of Britain on Saturday.

“This is a group that had a lot of ability. Always had a lot of talent. Guys were doing really well in their age groups growing up. We competed against each other in big matches, juniors, Futures, Challengers. Now we’re at the top of the game,” said Tiafoe, who now plays 110th-ranked Rinky Hijikata, a 22-year-old wild-card entry from Australia. “You see guys do certain things, it makes you believe it, right? The guys you grew up with, rubbed shoulders with and stuff – you see them do well, you’re like, ‘Wow, if this guy is doing it, what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I do it?’ It’s kind of a domino effect.”

Tiafoe reached his first Grand Slam semifinal at the U.S. Open a year ago – beating Rafael Nadal before losing to eventual champion Carlos Alcaraz – and is the first man from the United States to get to the fourth round in New York for four consecutive years since Andre Agassi in 2002-05.

Tiafoe was not exactly in fine form ahead of his return: He lost three of four matches on hard courts leading into this U.S. Open.

Not that he cares about that now.

“The summer’s irrelevant,” Tiafoe said. “It’s all about this tournament, honestly.”

Entering the 2022 U.S. Open, Paul had never won a match at the place. Then he claimed a pair of five-setters before bowing out in the third round against runner-up Casper Ruud.

“Normally when I’m done with tournaments, I don’t watch anymore,” said Paul, who signed his initials on one fan’s head Friday. “But ‘Foe’ is pretty much my favorite player to turn on and watch, so I couldn’t not tune in and watch it. … It not only brings confidence to him but also to us, because we all know that we can play at that level, too.”

Sure enough, at the next major tournament, the Australian Open in January, Paul produced his own breakthrough by making it to the semifinals before losing to Djokovic. Paul defeated Shelton in the quarterfinals there; they teamed up in doubles at the Miami Open two months later.

“There is very healthy competition amongst all of us,” Paul said about the U.S. contingent. “I mean, in no way would I say jealousy between us. We push each other with results or in practice.”

Second-seeded Novak Djokovic was in action at night in Arthur Ashe Stadium against fellow Serbian Laslo Djere, the No. 32 seed. Djokovic is chasing his 24th Grand Slam title and the departures of three high seeds in his half of the draw – No. 4 Holger Rune, No. 5 Casper Ruud and No. 7 Stefanos Tsitsipas – could help clear his path.

OTHER RESULTS

Earlier, top-seeded defending champion Iga Swiatek didn’t take it easy on close friend Kaja Juvan, beating the Slovenian qualifier, 6-0, 6-1, in just 49 minutes with an edge of 21-2 – that’s not a typo – in winners. Swiatek has dropped only nine games so far in the tournament. She’s handed her opponents 19 6-0 sets on the WTA tour this year.

“I didn’t like the fact I was kind of winning against my best friend,” Swiatek told the crowd in Louis Armstrong Stadium afterward. “Playing her is like playing a sister. … I don’t have many friends, but she’s my best friend.”

Swiatek next faces 20th-seeded Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia, the 2017 French Open champion, who came back to beat American Bernarda Pera, 4-6, 6-3, 6-3.

Earlier, No. 10 Karolina Muchova moved into the women’s fourth round with a 7-6 (0), 6-3 victory over American Taylor Townsend.

Muchova, who reached the final of this year’s French Open, equaled her best showing at Flushing Meadows by pushing the serve-and-volleying American off the net and onto the baseline. The 132nd-ranked Townsend won just 23 of 70 baseline points and had 39 unforced errors.

Muchova came into the U.S. Open with a career-high ranking and momentum after reaching the final of last month’s tuneup event in Cincinnati, losing to Gauff in straight sets.

She next faces Xinyu Wang of China, a 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 winner over Anna Karolina Schmiedlova of Slovakia.

DEFENDING DOUBLES CHAMPS OUSTED

Barbora Krejcikova and Katerina Siniakova, the top-seeded team and the defending women’s doubles champions, were knocked out of the tournament Friday in the second round.

They lost, 6-2, 6-3, to fellow Czech players Marketa Vondrousova, the Wimbledon singles champion, and Barbora Strycova, who won the doubles title at the All England Club.

Krejcikova and Siniakova completed a career Grand Slam with their victory last year at Flushing Meadows. That capped a dominant season in the major tournaments, with them winning all three that they played. They were unable to defend their 2021 French Open title after Krejcikova tested positive for COVID-19.

Strycova came out of retirement this year after giving birth to a son and teamed with Hsieh Su-Wei of Taiwan to win their second Wimbledon doubles title.

The loss by Krejcikova and Siniakova leaves the third-seeded team of Americans Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula as the highest seeds left in the tournament. Second-seeded Elise Mertens and Storm Hunter were upset in the first round.

AP staff writer James Martinez contributed to this story.

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