Coco Gauff will lead the U.S. tennis team to the Paris Olympics after leaving Tokyo

Coco Gauff will coach the U.S. tennis team at the Paris Olympics three years after missing the Tokyo Games after testing positive for Covid-19.

The 20-year-old Gauff, who finished second, will be joined by No. 5 seed Jessica Pegula, Danielle Collins and Emma Navarro in the women’s singles, in addition to Taylor Fritz, Tommy Paul, Chris Eubanks and Marcos Giron in the men’s singles.

The Tennis Olympic Games will start on July 27 at Roland Garros, the venue of the French Open tournament.

In an announcement Thursday, the U.S. Tennis Association said the U.S. team includes six Olympic debutants.

Gauff is the US Open champion and reached the semifinals of the first two Grand Slam tournaments this 12 months, the Australian Open and the French Open. In 2022, she was a finalist of the Roland Garros clay competition and will even be a contender for a medal in doubles.

Gauff and Pegula won five doubles titles as a pair. Gauff won her first major doubles title – with Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic – at the French Open this month.

Gauff tested positive for Covid-19 days before the start of the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics in July 2021.

Pegula returned to motion last week after suffering a neck injury in April that caused her to miss the French Open. In 2022, she was a singles quarterfinalist there.

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Collins, 30, who said this is able to be her last season on tour, won two titles this 12 months in Miami and Charleston. The 2022 Australian Open runner-up also reached the final in Strasbourg in May before bowing out of the second round of the French Open, where her best result was a quarterfinal in 2020.

Doubles Desirae Krawczyk will team up with Collins at the Paris Games. Collins and Krawczyk won the doubles title in Charleston last 12 months. Krawczyk is a four-time Grand Slam champion in mixed doubles.

Navarro, who finished seventeenth in his profession, reached the fourth round of the Roland Garros tournament.

On the men’s side, Fritz is the highest-ranked American at twelfth, followed by Paul at thirteenth. Eubanks is forty fourth and Giron 53rd.

Paul and Giron competed at the Tokyo Games.

The United States can also be taking 40-year-old Rajeev Ram to his third Olympics. He will face Austin Krajicek in doubles. Fritz and Paul will also join forces in doubles.

Ram, who has 4 major doubles titles to his name, won a silver medal in mixed doubles with Venus Williams at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games.

The USTA said it will announce one mixed doubles team for Paris at a later date.