THE ALL ENGLAND CLUB, London — At some point, Coco Gauff was going to win another tennis match on grass.After waiting until 7 p.m. for No. 2 Court to free up, on the first Monday of Wimbledon, she made quick work of Germany’s Tamara Korpatsch, the world No. 78.Needless to say, Gauff has won bigger matches in her life and her grass career, but this was a long time coming. It was her first win on grass in two years, which goes a long way toward explaining the big-old grin that spread across her face when Korpatsch’s last ball flew long.“I don’t regret the past, I just learn from it,” Gauff said on court with a laugh about her grass losing streak, after winning 6-2, 6-1 in less than an hour.There wasn’t a ton of mystery to this one. Gauff had more aces than double faults. She had more winners than unforced errors.She was tidy. She was clean. She took charge early and didn’t let up, stepping on the gas like she said she wanted to after establishing a lead in way she often hasn’t the past month. She was everything she hadn’t been the past two years on the most rarefied surface in tennis.Then she built on it. She escaped adversity against Solana Sierra of Argentina and Claire Liu of the U.S. with her trademark fight and hands on defense. She swatted the ball through the court against No. 11 seed Belinda Bencic of Switzerland, beating a grass-court homer at her own game. And then she did the most remarkable thing of all, playing a blend of anti-grass tennis and first-strike offense to knock out compatriot and No. 4 seed Jessica Pegula.After 24 months of pain, Gauff is in the Wimbledon semifinals.Why are some players better on clay than grass?Tifo SportsIn 2024, Gauff’s campaign ended with her standing on Centre Court in tennis disarray, yelling at her coaches as she slid to a fourth-round defeat against compatriot Emma Navarro.Last year, she lost her first warm-up match, at the Berlin Tennis Open, and then her first-round match at Wimbledon, too. Two weeks ago, she lost another opening match on the grass in Berlin.“We don’t have the best relationship,” Gauff, 22, joked in her pre-Wimbledon news conference Saturday. “I definitely think I have the ability to play on it. I think it’s more about the confidence.”Seven years after her breakthrough week at the All England Club, when Gauff upset her idol Venus Williams as a 15-year-old and made it to the round of 16, Wimbledon had remained the one Grand Slam where Gauff had yet to make the quarterfinals.That seemed a little strange, given the way Gauff started all those years ago. During her three wins in 2019, she was aggressive, took control of points and used her serve to keep her opponents at bay. Against Williams, she fired four aces in 10 games. She won 78 percent of her first-serve points, and 73 percent on her second serve. She converted all three of her break points.More than that, she stroked the ball with authority. At one stage, she won 11 consecutive points, against a five-time Wimbledon champion. There was little sign that day, or during the rest of the week, that grass would become something of an Achilles heel for her.Conventional wisdom would say Gauff is too talented a player, and too good an athlete, to never figure out grass — and preconceptions about a player’s style can sometimes hide the reality of their records. Coming into Wimbledon last year, Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Świątek, Gauff and Elena Rybakina were ruling the top of women’s tennis.