Eleven weeks agoCoco Gauff stood at the Philippe Chatrier court and hijst the Suzanne Lenglen Cup while thousands of fans overload her with an ovation.
It was the second big title of her young career, after an excellent clay season, and she saw there for more success in the rest of the year.
But she could never find a momentum on grass. She lost in the opening round of her lonely warm -up tournament prior to Wimbledon. And at the All England Club, three weeks after her triumph in Paris, she was upset in the first round in straight sets.
“I feel that I was mentally a bit overwhelmed with everything that came afterwards [the French Open]”A disappointed Gauff said after the loss.” I didn’t feel that I had enough time to celebrate and go back in again. “
But the early exit meant that Gauff, 21, would have more time to prepare for the North American Hard-Court Swing and the last major of the year at the US Open. She won the title in 2023 and was an early competition to win it again.
On Thursday, Gauff was again an admiring audience – this time, for 24,000 people in Arthur Ashe Stadium. She conquered a collision against Donna Vekic in her second round, and the fans showed their appreciation for everything that Gauff had overcome in the game. She visibly struggled.
“To be honest, today was a tough match for me, but I am just happy with how I could manage it. It was a tough few weeks,” Gauff said before she started crying. “You really helped me a lot, so I do this for myself and I also do it for you. No matter how difficult it comes in, you can do it.”
Now, in the third round in New York after her hard fought 7-6 (5), 6-2 victory over Vekic, Gauff currently has the fourth highest chances of ESPN BET to win the title and is certainly the favorite with fans. But although she has found a way to keep winning, it was a roller coaster ride, on and next to the field, to get to this point.
After struggling with her serve all summer, she made changes to her team in the hope of correcting it in the days prior to the tournament. While players dismiss all the time and hire new coaches, few do this close to a major, and even less when they try to implement such a consistent technical solution.
It is a risky gamble and one that Gauff hopes will have a high reward. But even she knows how big a challenge it is during demonstrably her most important and favorite tournament of the year.
Still, whatever happens this two weeks, she believes it is worth it.
“I mean, a tournament is a tournament,” said Gauff. “I hate to lose, regardless of where I am. If this was a 250 [level]I would feel just as crazy to do it.
“Yes, I felt this was a good opportunity. I don’t have so many points to defend honestly in this part of the season. I am one of those people, I look at the long term. I hope I can get it all together … By that time [but] If not, I have the rest of this year to work on it. But I do know that I had to make a change, there had to be technical change in it, and I don’t want to waste time to keep doing the wrong things. “
Gauff did not want to immediately make a drastic change immediately before the US opening.
She loved her coach Matt Daly, who started working with her after the US last year, and she won the China almost immediately afterwards. But she could no longer deny the severity of her serving problems. During her second round game at the Canadian Open at the end of July, Gauff had 23 double mistakes most in a WTA match since 2019. Remarkably enough because of her incredible all-round skills and fierce backhand, she won the game, but her problems continued. She had a total of 42 during her three games at the tournament.
At the start of the US Open, Gauff led the WTA in double errors this season – and she had 95 more than anyone.
A powerful weapon when she is able to serve more than 128 miles per hour. But her serve also abandoned her at many important moments during her career. After he was eliminated from the US Open 2024 after a loss of the fourth round in which her record 19 double mistakes saw, Gauff had tried to face her serving misery.
She fired Brad Gilbert and brought Daly in, a grip specialist. With his leadership, in addition to old coach Jean-Christophe Faurel, Gauff changed the positioning of her hands on the racket and she saw immediate results. In addition to winning the title in China, Gauff finished the year as champion at the WTA Finals in November.
It remained an effective change on the slower clay courts. But because the Tour returned to the higher speeds of grass and the hard court, it was clearly for Gauff – and the people around her – that if she wanted to reach the elevated career goals she had set for herself, her Serve needed a complete revision.
If a basketball player who changes their shooting movement, or a golfer who switches their swing, that is not a small business. And last week, when Gavin Macmillan, a biomechanics expert that Aryna Sabalenka the most famous helped her serving Yip’s in 2022 to overcome, in her words ‘Magical way available’, knew she could no longer wait. Gauff could not run the risk that he came to someone else’s team, so she made a “quick decision”.
Last Wednesday, four days before the start of the main drawing, Gauff was noted at the Practice Court with Macmillan and Faurel, which led to immediate speculation of the changes she had made. Later she confirmed that she had breaked apart with Daly and Macmillan brought in. They immediately went to the work and were even seen again on the then empty practice lanes while the rain crashed later in the day.
“The practice week was difficult because I spent a lot of time on the court to serve literally until my shoulder hurt,” Gauff said after her opening round match on Tuesday. “Yes, it’s just difficult.”
Many in the sport were stunned about the timing. Andy Roddick, the US Open Champion 2003 who worked with Gauff in 2023 for a few days, called it “ambitious” on his appropriate “served” podcast.
“It is very surprising that a player, a top player, who would mainly do for a major,” said player-commentator Patrick Mcenroe during a media call of Pretournament. “But one of the things you love with Coco Gauff is that she wants to get better. She is open to hearing different people.”
Gauff, who did not want to share too many details about the changes when requested, compared to learning a new language. Former world no. 1 and four -time large champion Jim Courier noted during a tennis canal broadcast that she “did a little different things with her hip, her shoulders, [and] With her racket threw “and called it” very complicated things “.
“To put it into practice in real time, I cannot emphasize enough how much that guts costs,” he added.
Gauff told reporters that she was trying to ‘not be obsessed with [it]”But it was clear that it dominated her thoughts because she confessed that she was looking at photos and had tagged reports about her service lotion on social media.
During her first round match on Tuesday, Gauff brought everything she had learned during six days of practicing MacMillan. Playing on Arthur Ashe in the night session against non -sowed Australian Ajla Tomljanovic, who had literally ended the career of Serena Williams in the same court three years earlier, proved how hard such a big change can be.
In the tightly disputed 6-4, 6-7 (2), 7-5 victory that lasted a little less than three hours, Gauff lost six service games and had 10 doubles errors-including two back-to-back while he served for the match on 5-4 in the decisive set. She later said that she was “mentally exhausted” and admitted how difficult it was to concentrate on the new changes and not to return to old habits during the heat of the fight.
“It’s a new movement,” Gauff said after the game. “Sometimes I am doing well, and sometimes not so well. If I do well, or if I do it, it is always a good result. It just reminds me of how to do it. But there are clearly so many things in my head at those difficult moments and not just thinking about the serve. I think about how to play, what they do.”
Eventually Gauff said that it was “the match I needed” because of the intensity and very stressful moments, and “a good test”.
Gauff again played in the prime-time night match on Ashe on Ashe and still had a shaky start. She failed seven times in the opening set and was broken in four of her service games. After double errors to lose another service game and with the score even at 4-all, Gauff was seen during the switch in her towel. Not long after, staying behind 6-5 and partially broken in the previous game because of two double errors, Gauff desperately practiced her serve while Vekic needed a medical time-out.
The unexpected opportunity to reset Gauff seemed to help, while she then forced a set of tiebreak and took over control. She took a short break for the second set to spot water on her face in the bathroom and get her calmness back. A much more crooked set followed. Perhaps the most impressive of everything, she had only one double mistake. She could not hide her relief from the conclusion of the competition.
“I think it was just nerves and just busy, to be honest, and I am someone who can usually thrive on it,” Gauff later told reporters. “There has been a lot to me, this tournament, more than normal, which I expected to come in. So yes, actually what you saw was what it was, and I could reset it. But yes, it was a challenging moment for me on the field.”
Gauff will be confronted to no. 28 Seed Magdalena Frech on Saturday. Gauff has won both earlier career meetings, including a 6-1, 6-2 routes in the round of 16 on the Australian Open 2024, so it can again be a crucial chance of making progress before the competition becomes even more difficult. If she won that competition, a blockbuster showdown with the revival of Naomi Osaka, a double US Open Champion, could wait in the fourth round.
Gauff has repeatedly found ways to win, this week and during her career, even when her serve abandons her, and she might have to do that again this tournament. But although her goal in New York is to reclaim the trophy, her current focus is only on implementing the changes she has learned.
She knows that this does – no matter how uncomfortable or uncomfortable – is the only way to achieve her ultimate goals. And even the moments of panic and confusion, as clearly torturing as they have been to her, will only help her in the long term.
“I think this entire tournament stays with me for the rest of my career, knowing that if I can endure two difficult games how I feel, I know I can endure almost everything,” Gauff said on Thursday evening. “I know anyway, I hope that I get more Grand Slam and when those nerves come, I will remember this feeling and know that it probably can’t get much worse than this.”
#Gauff #struggling #change #serve #rocky #open