Just like she did last year, Coco Gauff has found a way to build momentum at the end of a long and taxing season, which has given her a much-needed confidence boost ahead of her upcoming WTA Finals title defence in Riyadh.
Many players would have skipped the Asian swing had they experienced the emotional roller coaster Gauff went through during the summer – even her coach, Jean-Christophe Faurel advised her to do so.
Serving woes, a coaching shake-up, and inconsistent results, were just some of the things that led to Gauff suffering a panic attack on court during her US Open second round. It would have been completely understandable if she decided to sit out the next few tournaments. But that’s not Gauff.
The 21-year-old is the kind of player who can struggle for the first five months of the season, then flourish on the demanding clay and storm to a second major title at Roland Garros. She can double fault 23 times in a match and still walk away as the winner. She can have an emotional breakdown on court at her home slam and somehow make it to the next round.
So what did Gauff decide to do after the US Open? She practised for a couple of weeks, then hopped on a plane to China, where she reached the semi-finals in Beijing and won the title in Wuhan, of course, without dropping a set.
“At first I was thinking about not coming, just because of the mental side of things, but I didn't want to finish my year on that note,” Gauff said after the Wuhan final.
“I'm just happy with the way I played, and even when the moments got tough, I believed in myself and trusted my instincts.
“Winning the tournament in the way I did gives me a lot of confidence. It shows me that I have the level to be the player that I want to be. And I hope I can continue on this path.”
Gauff says the secret to her late-season success – last year she won Beijing, made the semis in Wuhan, then won the WTA Finals in Riyadh – is her ability to trick her mind into treating those last few weeks of action as simply practice for the following season.
Some people doubt Gauff’s mental strength, but time and again, the American world No 3 has shown her mind and mentality are her biggest assets.
During the summer, just a few days before the US Open, Gauff took a bold decision.
She parted ways with one of her coaches, Matthew Daly, and brought in biomechanics specialist Gavin MacMillan to help fix her serve.
Gauff’s serve can be one of the most potent shots on the women’s tour, but it is also one of the most criticised.
MacMillan is the man who helped Aryna Sabalenka overcome her serving yips; their work on reconstructing her service motion was instrumental in the Belarusian’s rise to world No 1 and becoming a four-time Grand Slam champion.
When MacMillan suddenly became available right before the US Open, Gauff did not hesitate in hiring him, even though she was about to play one of the most important tournaments of the year.
“I just felt like I don't want to waste any more time,” she explained. “I knew I had to make a quick decision because I knew he would be pretty sought out after.”
Gauff described the biomechanics work she’s been doing with MacMillan as “learning a new language” – a language that in no way could be mastered in the four days leading up to the US Open.
“Obviously US Open, that tournament was super tough for me mentally, but I definitely think it was the right decision, even though I maybe wouldn't have got the result that I hoped for,” Gauff told The National.
“But in the long run, I'm going to look back and be happy that I made that decision in that moment of time.”
A two-time Grand Slam champion who has been breaking records ever since she exploded on to the scene as a 15-year-old at Wimbledon, Gauff is no stranger to pressure. So why was the US Open particularly difficult?
“I think just knowing, because I made a change with my coaching and knowing that everybody was looking at the serving aspect of my game, I just felt the pressure to all of a sudden have a brand-new serve within four days, which I knew it wasn't possible, but I think a lot of people were expecting that,” she explains.
“I tried my best with the time that I had. I definitely think I got in my head about it for sure. I wish I could have relaxed a little bit more.
“But now, how I feel in my serve, I feel like it's better and I'm not doing as many doubles as before.
“So yeah, I think it was nice to have that experience, even though it felt awful in the moment, but I feel like those are the type of things that make you stronger and prove, like, I don't know … I feel like years from now, I can always recall on that experience and how I was able to get through those first couple of matches with how I was feeling.”
MacMillan played seven different sports growing up in Canada, and has worked with all sorts of athletes, from baseball players to MMA fighters. He believes peak performance can be reached through sound technique and he spoke to Gauff in a logical manner that allowed her to better understand her serving problems.
“I feel like with my serve, there have been a lot of comments and opinions, and things that I've tried and it just didn't help. I'm a very logic-based person and I felt like this was the best thing to make it logical for me,” said Gauff.
“A lot of people thought it was mental and things like that, but I knew for me, it wasn't because of the fact that I feel like I'm one of the mentally stronger players on tour.
“So when I found that someone to give me a real solution to it, it made a lot of a difference. And then it was just about trusting it and putting the reps in. And I didn't have that much time to do that, I'm still working on it, but I definitely think the stats in the last few tournaments have shown that it's got better since I started.”
One of the hardest things to do as a professional tennis player is to make fundamental changes to a specific shot after hitting the ball a certain way for so many years.
But many of the game’s biggest stars have shown that it’s never too late to tinker with one’s technique. Back in 2020, Venus Williams made drastic changes to her serve – making it more compact with a lower ball toss – in order to reduce the risk of injury. She was 40 years old at the time.
Sabalenka has transformed her career, thanks to the work she has done with MacMillan, and Gauff is hoping she can be one more positive example in that department.
“I was looking at Novak and he's someone who didn't have as great of a serve in the beginning of his career, obviously different issue than me, but he just wasn't serving as strong. And he made that change and has gone on to obviously be Novak Djokovic. And even at that time, he was still like a successful player,” said Gauff.
“So yeah, I’ve drawn on those experiences. And obviously Aryna and Venus and those who've done those changes.
“I think [Lorenzo] Musetti, even recently, we were at US Open on the court, sharing the court together, both of us serving, we both changed our serve recently and we were laughing about it.
“So yeah, just seeing that other players, it's just inspiring knowing tennis is won by small margins and those little differences make a difference. And I know if I want to get to the scale that I want to get to, I have to make those changes.”
Gauff will get another chance to showcase those changes when she heads to Riyadh early next month.
The WTA Finals will take place in Riyadh from November 1 to 8 and will feature the best eight players in the world.
Gauff won four of her five matches in the Saudi capital last year to clinch the prestigious title and pocketed a record $4.8 million as a result.
An undefeated champion at this year’s edition can earn a whopping $5.235 million, a further testament to the WTA’s positioning as the pinnacle of women’s sport.
“I definitely think that tennis is the standard when it comes to prize money in women's sports obviously. I feel like we've been lucky to have trailblazers like Billie Jean King to start that a long time ago and put that foot down a long time ago. And obviously Venus Williams also, helping advocate for that. So I feel like we do have that responsibility,” said Gauff.
“I feel like it's important for us to continue to advocate for what other sports can follow.
“And I think also tennis is so global, so many players from different nationalities and everything. So I think that makes a difference of why other sports and leagues maybe, I hope, look to us as inspiration to demand that they get paid their worth.
“We're very lucky with that prize money in Riyadh.”
