close
close

first Drop

Com TW NOw News 2024

    • Coco Gauff’s US Open elimination is a turning point for tennis star
    news

    Coco Gauff’s US Open elimination is a turning point for tennis star

    Vaseline Posted on

    play

    NEW YORK — When Coco Gauff spoke last year about the doubters and haters who propelled her to the US Open title, it felt a bit manufactured.

    The real story of Gauff’s career was never about the anonymous online comments on phone apps that Gen Zers too often rely on for validation. In real life, Gauff was the product of a tennis ecosystem that decided she was a sure thing when she was 10 years old. As prestigious academies recruited her and companies threw endorsement deals at her, anyone with any real stake in the game knew that winning a Grand Slam singles title was a matter of when, not if.

    But Gauff’s 6-3, 4-6, 6-3 loss to Emma Navarro last Sunday, which ended her reign as US Open champion in the fourth round, is a moment to remember in her career and her rise as America’s most recognizable tennis player.

    For the first time, perhaps the doubts are real.

    “It’s disappointing of course because I want to get to another level,” Gauff said Sunday. “But I’m not going to beat myself up and say, ‘Oh, this is so bad.'”

    She shouldn’t be too hard on herself. Gauff is only 20, with a long run-up to achieving great things in the sport. Her mantra at the US Open was that no one can take away what she’s already done, and that she’ll have plenty more chances to add Grand Slam titles before her career is over. It’s both a smart and accurate way to alleviate some of the pressure she undoubtedly felt returning to the scene of her greatest triumph.

    But Gauff has been around long enough and has reached the latter stages of Grand Slams often enough to have higher expectations and to be able to realistically assess what will go wrong.

    Here are the facts: Despite reaching the semifinals of the Australian Open and French Open, both of which should be considered successful runs, Gauff is 7-12 this season against players ranked in the top 30. Since winning the title in Auckland in her first tournament of the year, Gauff has yet to reach a final. While she has three top-10 wins this season, two of them came against the spiraling Ons Jabeur, who has now fallen to No. 22. And Gauff herself leaves New York outside the top five for the first time in a long time.

    In other words, the whole year has been a step backwards. That much is undeniable. And for someone who once aspired to Serena Williams-like numbers on the scoreboard, this is not the trajectory she should be on at 20.

    “It’s not the summer I wanted,” Gauff said. “But there are about 70 other players in the draw who would love to have the summer I had. So many people want to get to the fourth round, so many people want to get to the Olympics, so it’s about perspective.

    “I expected better, but in the end it happened and I know I can turn it around.”

    What went wrong and what now?

    A year ago, when Gauff was making her incredible run to the title, much was made of the fact that she had overhauled her coaching team after Wimbledon, hiring Pere Riba and Brad Gilbert, who has a huge presence in the sport thanks to his commentary work for ESPN. Riba left last December to take over as head coach from Zheng Qinwen, with Gauff replacing him with Felipe Ramirez.

    Whether Gauff continues with this coaching setup or makes some changes, her year has largely been marked by poor serves and losing leads while her forehand, considered her biggest weakness in the game last year, faded into the background.

    Gauff double-faulted 256 times before the US Open, the fifth-highest total on the WTA tour this year. In her loss to Navarro, Gauff double-faulted 19 times, including several at crucial moments when the outcome was uncertain. She acknowledged that a deep dive into her service issues was warranted as she heads into 2025.

    “It’s a mental hurdle I have to overcome, but I definitely want to look at other things because I don’t want to lose these kinds of matches anymore,” she said.

    Gauff also committed 60 unforced errors on Sunday, losing a majority of baseline rallies as her shots eventually broke against Navarro’s consistency and ability to redirect the pace. Navarro won 34 of 54 rallies of five or more shots.

    One of the more interesting things about Gauff’s press conference is that she hasn’t committed to a schedule for the rest of the year. While she will certainly be traveling to Asia for some of the big fall events and will likely qualify for the year-end WTA Championships in Saudi Arabia, Gauff made it clear that she needs to be on the practice court to address some of these issues.

    Maybe it’s time for a little reset.

    “I feel like I want to have a good training block,” she said. “I haven’t had that since maybe before the clay court season started. I think long term I want to have a good training block and we’ll see how many tournaments I play the rest of the year.”

    Even at 20, Gauff has reached a point in her career where she can only be judged by her own standards. The reality is that she is falling short, at least for a while. For the first time in her career, there may be some real doubters and haters who are wondering if the way she played a year ago en route to the US Open title was the exception rather than the norm.

    Gauff isn’t going anywhere as a major force in women’s tennis, and she still has a few years to go before she reaches her expected physical peak. For someone who entered the tour with some technical flaws in her serve and forehand that she hasn’t fully corrected, these ups and downs may just be part of the game.

    But now that this chapter of her career is closed, Gauff doesn’t have to worry about defending anything anymore. She’ll go into 2025 with a clean slate and fewer expectations. Hopefully, she can make the most of that opportunity.

    Vaseline
    View all posts

    You Might Also Like