I first watched Coco Gauff in the summer of 2019, when my family and I went back to New Zealand (we’d lived there for five years in the 2000s) for a couple weeks. Wimbledon was squarely in the middle of our trip, and I stayed up late or got up in the wee hours to watch every day, my tennis fandom at its peak at that point. I remember watching Novak Djokovic’s first round match, and how his title defense began with a double fault against Philipp Kohlschreiber. I remember Hubert Hurkacz, then unknown to me, hitting a diving volley winner against Djokovic en route to winning the second set. But my clearest memories of Wimbledon that year came from watching a 15-year-old Gauff play Polona Hercog in the third round.
Gauff had already made headlines by beating Venus Williams in the first round. She’d come through qualifying, too, straight-setting the top seed before rolling over two more opponents to qualify for the main draw. Making the third round of Wimbledon was already a remarkable accomplishment for a 15-year-old, so when Hercog took a 6-3, 5-2 lead over Gauff, I was sad but not disappointed or surprised.
Then, down match point, Gauff produced a sick backhand slice down the line, loaded with sidespin, that leapt away from Hercog for a winner. I had seen great match point saves before, but rarely such a unique, audacious shot under that level of pressure. (And Gauff was only 15?!) It got Gauff back into the match, she won the second-set tiebreak with a swing volley winner after an agonizingly patient rally, and when she won the third 7-5, the kid had become a star.
If you go back and watch the highlights of the Hercog match, you can see many of the qualities that just earned Gauff the 2023 U.S. Open title. Serving at 5-3, 30-15 in the second set of that match, two points from the win, Hercog unleashed a vicious forehand down the line, punctuating it with the kind of extended grunt that implied she was sure the ball wasn’t coming back. Gauff ran it down, painted the baseline with her next shot, then cleaned up with an inside-out forehand winner. It was that same belief-defying defense that frustrated the Australian Open champion and newly-minted world number one Aryna Sabalenka into forehand error after forehand error today.
Still, what made the biggest difference for Gauff in winning this title was her willingness to improve. Her forehand broke down for much of the last two years, broke down terribly, to the point that she’d openly acknowledge it was an obvious problem. She made the Roland-Garros final in 2022, but after Iga Świątek destroyed her in that final, the forehand just didn’t look sufficiently stable for Gauff to win a major.
Gauff apparently agreed. After some frustrating results in 2023, she hired Brad Gilbert, who had a profound effect on not just Andre Agassi’s career, but his life. They started working on the positioning for the forehand instead of taking on the insurmountable task of radically changing the stroke. Gauff started trusting her forehand rather than trying to protect it, and positive changes were swift and significant. Gauff beat Świątek, who had run over her in all seven of their previous matches, in Cincinnati this year. She followed it up with a win over Karolina Muchova to secure the title.
And Gauff’s forehand was a legitimate asset at times in the U.S. Open final, not just a liability to be overcome. At 5-3 in the second set, Gauff began her service game by trading forehands with Sabalenka, the owner of one of the most brutally powerful drives in the world. It should have been a mismatch. Instead, Gauff changed direction first and fired a winner down the line. Sabalenka was more rattled by Gauff’s defense than anything else, but the young American’s forehand meant that Sabalenka didn’t have a safe zone to aim at when she was rattled. By the end of the match, Gauff looked infinitely calmer than her opponent, despite being the one without a major title and the younger player by six years.
*****
Gauff is a big reason why the WTA is so fun right now. Between the top six players — Sabalenka, Świątek, Gauff, Jessica Pegula (with whom Gauff often plays doubles), Elena Rybakina, and Ons Jabeur — it feels like anyone can beat anyone. Świątek held the number one ranking, but Sabalenka and Rybakina proved to have her measure this year. When it seemed that those two had separated themselves, Jabeur toppled both at Wimbledon. Now Gauff has beaten Świątek and Sabalenka in huge recent matches. Sabalenka has just taken over the #1 ranking, but that spot is very much up for grabs.
It’s worth taking a moment to appreciate the state of the WTA. The average age among the top six is under 25. With any luck, they’ll be playing each other for years to come. The ATP has fewer standouts; Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz had separated themselves from the rest of the pack by so much that when Daniil Medvedev beat Alcaraz last night, many were shocked. The best two or three matchups on the ATP are incredible, but without them, the technical and mental flaws in the rest of the field are sadly apparent. The WTA is far deeper and more competitive.
Even if the current top six on the WTA don’t last long, it seems overwhelmingly likely that Gauff will be a fixture at the top for years on end. Her breakout having come so early in her life and career has worked wonderfully to her advantage; her maturity at 19 goes way beyond what many of her peers boast at 29. What will Gauff’s level be in two years? Five years? I can’t wait for her to show us.
Popcorn Tennis 