Coco Gauff isn’t wasting any time in early Wimbledon rounds

She has hobbies that she’ll pick up on and off, including crochet and French lessons. She said she might pop by London’s West End on Wednesday night to see a show.

When you’ve got as much free time as Coco Gauff does these days, you’ve got to do something to fill the hours.

Gauff, the No. 2 seed at Wimbledon, zipped through her second-round match Wednesday against Romanian qualifier Anca Todoni, 6-2, 6-1, in 1 hour 6 minutes. That set up a third-round battle with Britain’s Sonay Kartal that’s sure to draw plenty of eyes at the All England Club.

The quick victory was a continuation of a pattern this year for the 20-year-old American, a contrast to the early-round matches of last year’s Grand Slams. In 2023, Gauff often slogged her way through tight two-set matches or gritted her teeth through three-set doozies. She had to win four three-set matches to earn the U.S. Open title.

This year, Gauff cruised through the first week at the Australian Open and French Open, playing one three-set match in the quarterfinals of each tournament before losing in the semifinals.

“I’m just getting better at taking care of business and trying to clean up and make sure that these matches don’t go three sets,” Gauff said of her early-round success.

She chalked up her newfound precision to increased confidence after her U.S. Open win. Gauff captured the title in New York with what she said wasn’t her best tennis, which gave her added conviction when staring down Grand Slam draws this year.

It also helped her feel comfortable leaning into her most aggressive tennis. That serves her well on Wimbledon’s grass courts, where the speedy surface makes it more difficult to win points on defense.

“You kind of want to be the first person to strike,” Gauff said.

She dictated from start to finish against Todoni, pummeling the ball when serving and winning 85 percent of points on her first serve.

“I’m just going for it more and accepting the misses,” Gauff said. “Today, I had a really low first-serve percentage in the first set, and maybe in the second it got higher.” She put 38 percent of her first serves in during the first set, 53 percent in the second.

The victory keeps Gauff in good position to make a deep run in a fairly open women’s draw. Top-ranked Iga Swiatek is the favorite and plays unseeded Petra Martic of Croatia in the second round Thursday, and 2022 Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina remains a threat. She plays Germany’s Laura Siegemund in the second round Thursday.

But third-seeded Aryna Sabalenka withdrew Tuesday with a shoulder injury, and later in the day, reigning champion Marketa Vondrousova became the first defending champ to lose in the first round in 30 years, ensuring this will be the seventh consecutive tournament that Wimbledon crowns a different women’s winner.

Gauff took note of that as she examined the champions wall at the practice facility on Wimbledon’s grounds.

“It was a lot of different names, which is something new — not new, kind of new, post-Serena [Williams], post-a lot of the legends,” Gauff said. “It just shows there’s a lot of talent on the women’s tour and it’s anybody’s game. … My outlook, I mean, it gives you confidence obviously when you see that the field isn’t stacked. I guess stacked in the way where there’s one player dominating or three players dominating. I think everybody has an equal shot, and it’s just about who can perform better that week.”

Naomi Osaka, the four-time Grand Slam champion who is seven months into her comeback after giving birth a year ago, was another big name to fall Wednesday. She lost to No. 19 seed American Emma Navarro, 6-4, 6-1, in a 59-minute sprint on Center Court.

Osaka looked rattled from nearly the beginning, and Navarro was able to take advantage, winning 82 percent of points on her first serve. The 23-year-old former NCAA champion at Virginia moved into the third round in her second Wimbledon appearance with gutsy tennis, keeping points short and playing a clean match — she had just five unforced errors.

“Obviously she has a really big serve, so I knew that was going to be something that I was going to have to deal with today,” Navarro said of Osaka. “I tried to move my positioning around against first serves. I don’t know — maybe that got in her head a little bit. I wanted to try to make her hit the serve that she doesn’t want to hit, and I didn’t want her to know where I’m going to be at in terms of positioning.”

Navarro won 50 percent of the points off Osaka’s first serve in the second set as she moved to close out the match and sent the former U.S. Open and Australian Open winner home from her first Wimbledon appearance since 2019.