After Shaky Serving, Coco Gauff Shakes Up Her Team
Coco Gauff has made a big change to her team just two months after winning the French Open
NEW YORK — Some quick news to report as the U.S. Open approaches: the top American player has made a change to her team on the eve of her country’s biggest tournament.
WTA No. 3 Coco Gauff has parted with one of her two coaches, Matt Daly.
Daly confirmed the news to Bounces, saying that the decision had happened “recently” but wanting to let Gauff be the one to speak about her decision.
“Only have good things to say about Coco, enjoyed working with her,” Daly told Bounces.
ESPN also inaccurately reported on air that Gauff had parted with her other coach, J.C. Faurel, but he remains on her team and was still on court with Gauff today at the U.S. Open.
Any shake-up would have been a considerable surprise months ago, after Daly and Faurel coached Gauff to her second major singles title at the French Open in June.
But tennis fortunes can change quickly: this is the second year in a row that a reigning French Open champion has dropped one of her coaches within months, after Iga Swiatek parted with Tomasz Wiktorowski in October last year.
Gauff’s struggles since her victory in Paris have been obvious. She lost both matches she played on grass, losing to Wang Xinyu in Berlin—a win that aged well when Wang made the final— and then losing to Dayana Yastremska in the first round of Wimbledon.
Gauff had a 4-2 singles record across the hard courts of Montreal and Cincinnati—and won the doubles in Montreal alongside McCartney Kessler—but her sporadic serving issues flared up again, hitting rafts of double faults. In her first match in Montreal, she hit double faults on 20.4 percent of service points; in her last match in Cincinnati, she hit double faults on 19.0 percent of service points.
Gauff slipped from No. 2 to No. 3 in the WTA rankings after Iga Swiatek won the title in Cincinnati.
There is reason for short-term optimism, however: Gauff has often found success quickly after making coaching changes. In 2023, Gauff hired Brad Gilbert and quickly won titles in Washington, Cincinnati, and the U.S. Open. When she began working late last year with Daly, a coach known best for his work on technique, she won titles in Beijing and the WTA Finals in Riyadh.
Gauff was on court today at the U.S. Open with Gavin MacMillan, the biomechanics specialist who helped Aryna Sabalenka get out of her own double fault morass. (More on him at Bounces soon, fittingly!)
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Somehow the coaches akways take the fall but when do players take the responsibility?
A year ago I commented that Coco had the yips on her serve and forehand. It was doubtful to me the a new grip was the answer to her serving woes. A year later “grip guy” is gone and I expect she will find another guru to get her through the Open. But the yips aren’t that easily cured. Ask any golfer who can’t make a 3ft putt or pitcher who can no longer find the plate. If I were advising her I’d keep it really simple. Take some pressure off your second serve by getting a higher percentage of first serves in. Sounds pretty obvious but I don’t see her doing it. She doesn’t need 125mph first serves to win. Slow the first serve down to a speed where it’s always going to go in and save the big serve for the most important points. That’s what Bill Tilden did and many consider him the greatest server of all time. The next thing is that her swing on her second serves to needs to be harder than on the first. But it should be behind her head and with much more spin. If you have the yips trying to hit a 3/4 speed second serve is almost impossible. If you are swinging as hard as you can the nerves go away. Coco is such a wonderful athlete and person that it would be a shame for her career to stall because she can’t make a second serve.