NEW YORK — This would not have been easy for anyone, and it was not easy for Coco Gauff. She is aware of the expectations of others. She has her own expectations, too, of course.
An exit in the second round of the US Open on Thursday night simply would not do. And double-faulting her way to defeat might just be the worst possible scenario. So after she missed two consecutive serves to get broken and fall behind in the opening set against Donna Vekic in Arthur Ashe Stadium, Gauff felt overwhelmed and couldn’t hide it.
The tears came. They wouldn’t stop. She covered her face with a towel on the sideline. When she walked back out on court after the changeover, Gauff kept dabbing at her eyes between points, trying to focus, trying to figure out a way to win. After she did just that, straightening out her serving issues in the second set and eliminating Vekic 7-6 (5), 6-2, Gauff cried some more.
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“I just show people what it’s like to be a human, and I have bad days, but I think it’s more about how you get up after those bad moments and how you show up after that,” said Gauff, who is seeded No. 3 at Flushing Meadows, where she won the first of her two Grand Slam titles in 2023. “I think today I showed that I can get up after feeling the worst I’ve ever felt on the court.”
Her serving woes resurface from time to time, including when 19 double-faults contributed to a loss that ended her title defense in New York a year ago. She leads the tour with more than 300 double-faults this season — 23 in one match not long ago — and hired biomechanics expert Gavin MacMillan, credited with rebuilding No. 1-ranked Aryna Sabalenka’s serve, shortly before this US Open.
MacMillan altered the way Gauff hits serves, and she has been smacking so many in practice over the past week that her shoulder aches.
“The biggest challenge is just changing the motion and changing everything before such a big tournament for me,” Gauff said. “This is one of the most nervous tournaments for me in general, and on top of all this, it’s a lot.”
In the first round, she needed three sets to get past Ajla Tomljanovic, in part because of double-faults.
But like in that match, Gauff’s defense and superiority at the baseline carried her past Vekic.
What left her as emotional as she was Thursday?
“It was just nerves and just pressure, honestly, and I’m someone that usually can thrive on that. There’s been a lot on me this tournament, more than usual, which I expected coming in,” Gauff explained. “Basically, what you saw out there was what it was, and I was able to reset through it. But it was a challenging moment for me on the court. It’s been a tough couple of weeks on and off the court, but I’m just happy to get through it today.”
Vekic, who beat Gauff at the Paris Olympics last year en route to the silver medal, took a medical timeout to have her right shoulder looked at late in the first set and was having plenty of serving woes of her own. She double-faulted 10 times.
In the first set, Gauff, a 21-year-old from Florida, had seven double-faults and lost four of her six service games, including to trail 5-4 – when the tears began – and then 6-5. But she broke right back each of those times and then was superior in the tiebreaker.
When Vekic sent a forehand long to end the set, Gauff’s mother rose from her seat, one row behind MacMillan, and shouted, “Come on! Let’s go!”
Gauff headed to the locker room to splash some water on her face and regain focus.
It worked wonders.
She gathered herself, and the second set went much more smoothly: just one double-fault, zero service breaks, in front of a crowd that included star gymnast Simone Biles.
By the end, Gauff was in a much better mood, yelling while shaking a closed left fist when the match was won.
She had noticed that Biles was on hand.
“She helped me pull it out. I was just thinking: If she could go on a 6-inch beam and do that, with all the pressures of the world, then I can hit the ball. … It brought me a little bit of calm, just knowing her story, with all the things she went through mentally,” Gauff said. “She’s an inspiration, surely.”
Gauff’s next opponent will be Magdalena Frech, who rallied to knock out American Peyton Stearns 6-7 (6), 6-3, 6-2 to advance to the third round.
American Amanda Anisimova, the No. 8 seed, moved on with a 7-6 (2), 6-2 victory over Maya Joint.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
