NEW YORK — When Coco Gauff talked about doubters and haters fueling her run to the U.S. Open title a year ago, it felt more than a little bit manufactured.
The true narrative of Gauff’s career was never about the anonymous online comments on phone apps that Gen Z’ers too often rely on for validation. In real life, Gauff was the product of a tennis ecosystem that decided she was a sure thing by the time she was 10 years old. As prestigious academies recruited her and companies threw sponsorship deals at her feet, anyone with an actual stake in the sport knew that winning a Grand Slam title was only a matter of when, not if.
But Gauff’s 6-3, 4-6, 6-3 loss to Emma Navarro on Sunday, ending her reign as U.S. Open champion in the fourth round, is a moment to bookmark in her career and ascent as America’s most recognizable tennis star.
For the first time, the doubts might be real.
“Obviously because I’m wanting to reach a different level, it is disappointing,” Gauff said Sunday. “But I’m not going to beat myself up and be like, ‘Oh this is so bad.’”
She shouldn’t be too hard on herself. Gauff is merely 20, with a long runway to accomplish great things in the sport. Her mantra coming into the U.S. Open was that nobody can take away what she’s already done and she’ll have many more chances to add Grand Slam titles before her career is over. That’s both a clever and accurate way to relieve some of the pressure she surely felt returning to the site of her greatest triumph.
But Gauff has been around long enough now and gotten to the late stages of Grand Slams enough times to have higher expectations and realistically assess what has gone wrong.
Here are the facts: Though Gauff reached the semifinals of the Australian Open and French Open, which should both be considered successful runs, she is 7-12 this season against players ranked in the top 30. Since winning the title in Auckland in her first tournament of the year, Gauff hasn’t even reached a final. Though she has three top-10 wins this season, two of them came against the spiraling Ons Jabeur, who is now down to No. 22. And Gauff herself leaves New York ranked outside the top five for the first time in quite awhile.
In other words, the entire year on balance has been a backwards step. That’s undeniable. And for someone who once aspired to put up Serena Williams-like numbers up on the scoreboard, this is not the trajectory she should be on at 20 years old.
“It’s not the summer I wanted,” Gauff said. “But there’s like 70 other players in the draw who would love to have the summer I had. So many people want to make the fourth round, so many people want make the Olympics, so it’s (about) perspective.
“I expect better, but at the end of the day it happened and I know I can turn it around.”
So what went wrong and what’s next?
A year ago, as Gauff went on her incredible run to the title, much was made of the fact that she overhauled her coaching team after Wimbledon by hiring Pere Riba and Brad Gilbert, who is a huge presence in the sport by virtue of his commentary work for ESPN. Riba departed last December to take over the head coaching duties for Zheng Qinwen, while Gauff replaced him with Felipe Ramirez.
Whether Gauff continues with this coaching setup or makes some changes, her year has largely been characterized by poor serving and losing leads while treading water with her forehand, which had been considered the biggest weak spot in her game last year.
Coming into the U.S. Open, Gauff double faulted 256 times, the fifth-most on the WTA tour this year. In her loss to Navarro, Gauff threw up 19 double faults, including several in clutch moments when the outcome was hanging in the balance. She acknowledged that a deep dive into her serving issues was warranted as she goes into 2025.
“It’s a mental hurdle I have to get over, but I definitely want to look at other things because I don’t want to lose matches like this anymore,” she said.
Gauff also had 60 unforced errors Sunday, losing a majority of the baseline rallies because her strokes eventually broke down against Navarro’s consistency and ability to redirect pace. Navarro won 34 of the 54 rallies of five shots or more.
One of the more interesting things from Gauff’s press conference is that she did not commit to a schedule for the rest of the year. Though she’ll certainly go to Asia for some of the big-money fall events and is likely to qualify for the year-end WTA championships in Saudi Arabia, Gauff made it clear that she needs to be on the practice court addressing some of these issues.
Maybe it’s time for a bit of a reset.
“I feel like I want to spend a good training block,” she said. “I haven’t had that since maybe before the clay season started. I think for me in the long term I want to get a good training block and we’ll see how many tournaments I play for the rest of the year.”
Even at 20 years old, Gauff has reached a point in her career where she only needs to be judged by her own standards. The reality is that she’s fallen short, at least momentarily. For the first time in her career, there may actually be some real doubters and haters wondering whether the way she played a year ago en route to the U.S. Open title was an exception rather than the norm.
Gauff isn’t going anywhere as a major factor in women’s tennis, and she’s still got a few years before she hits her projected physical peak. For someone who came onto the tour with some technical flaws in her serve and forehand and hasn’t fully corrected them, these ups and downs may just be part of the package.
But with this chapter of her career closed, Gauff no longer has to worry about being the defending champion of anything. She will go into 2025 with a clean slate and fewer expectations. Hopefully she can make the most of that opportunity.