Coco Gauff Gets Huge Offer From Serena Williams’ Ex-Coach After Canadian Open Setback

Coco Gauff’s serve, once considered one of the most potent weapons in her arsenal, has lately become a major cause of concern for her. Of late, she has struggled with consistency, committing an alarming number of double faults. Last year, she committed 430 double faults in her 71 matches. This year, she has played 44 matches and has committed more than 250 double faults already—42 of them came in just the three singles matches she played in the Canadian Open.

She committed 23 double faults in her opening match against Danielle Collins—the fifth-highest number ever recorded in a WTA Tour match. Last year, when her service struggles cost her the US Open fourth round against Emma Navarro, Rennae Stubbs couldn’t help but flag what she thought were obvious gaps in her technique during an ESPN conversation. And she did that in the presence of the young American’s former coach, Brad Gilbert. “…hard for me to say because Brad [Gilbert] is sitting here…but her technique, the elbow, is too low, the grip is a little weird as well. So it’s hard for her to get that nice first serve and then the same or similar second serve,” Stubbs said. Shortly after that, Gauff and Gilbert went their separate ways. 

Even recently, after seeing her performance at the Canadian Open, she took a jibe at her current team, featuring Matt Daly and Jean-Christophe Faurel, saying, “I don’t understand why now she has literally two coaches. Nothing has changed on her serve…like the ball toss is so far ahead of her on the second serve.” However, Stubbs isn’t the only one who has criticized Coco Gauff’s coaching team recently. In a recent interview with Tennis 365, Serena Williams’ childhood coach, Rick Macci, expressed his interest in working with the youngster on her biggest weakness. Macci said, “To consult or help someone, obviously right off the bat, it would be Coco Gauff. I mean, there’s no doubt about it, I could flip the script with her second serve and forehand. No doubt about it, but it’d have to be done in the off-season.“

Rick Macci’s experience over the past four decades in molding a player is unmatched by any teacher in the tennis world. He has coached the likes of the Williams sisters, Andy Roddick, Maria Sharapova, Jennifer Capriati, and many others in their formative years. During the interview, he spoke about his close involvement with Coco Gauff‘s family and also went on to add how he wants to improve Gauff’s serve, “This has to be science-based, and it has to be done from a biomechanical point of view. And I’ve looked at her serve from every different direction, and right now, because she’s been doing this since a little kid, the muscle memory is baked in extra crispy. She has very, very long arms, she has a very loose arm.“

He stated that he would work closely with Dr. Brian Gorden, who has a PhD in Biomechanics, and look to modify Gauff’s technique, even going so far as to claim that Coco Gauff’s constant trouble can be fixed in one hour.

However, this wasn’t the first time that we’ve seen him addressing this issue with Coco Gauff. There have been plenty of instances in the past where we saw Rick Macci speaking about Coco Gauff’s serving woes. Even last year, Macci made this bold claim that Coco Gauff’s serving woes barely require an hour to be fixed. 

What does Coco Gauff have to say about her ‘double trouble’?

Victoria Mboko, wrapping up the match against Coco Gauff, within 62 minutes of their R16 clash at the Canadian Open, raised the eyebrows of several tennis bigwigs. She defeated the American by 6-1,6-4, thanks, in no small part, to the 6 double faults and 24 unforced errors that the latter committed.

Although Gauff managed to reduce the numbers quite significantly since her first match against Danielle Collins, there were a few things that rang alarm bells in the mind of BBC commentator, David Law. According to Law, “I was struck by just how lost… she looked confused. She looked about why it’s going wrong. I just detected somebody who is very confused right now, and that must be a horrible feeling when you’re as experienced as Coco Gauff is, that you’ve won two Grand Slams, one of them quite recently. You’ve come off the back of that. Where has the game gone?“

David Law was quite surprised by her performance, especially in her match against Danielle Collins. But coming to her duel against the teenager, after the match against Coco Gauff, Victoria Mboko was asked if anything had crossed her mind seeing Gauff make plenty of errors in that match. “Well, I mean, nothing really crosses my mind just because, I mean, that’s the game. People make errors. It happens. I make errors too. So I was just really focused on myself and what I had to do,” said Mboko. 

But when it came to sharing her own thoughts on this, Coco Gauff spoke about her serving woes after her match against Veronika Kudermetova. She admitted that she is quite “disappointed” seeing her commit such a large number of double faults in her matches. But the most interesting thing from her statements was Gauff claiming she did well during the practice sessions. “I just would like it to transfer to the match,” said Coco Gauff.

She said that she doesn’t want to lead the stats when it comes to double faults. However, having said that, she also claimed, “I know I probably won’t be ever double fault-free, but if I could get that to 2%, 3%, it would make a big difference in just making these matches a lot easier.” 

Coco Gauff is now all set to enter the Cincinnati Open, and she has been handed a pretty tricky draw over there. Can she make a few corrections and come up with a better performance in her next tournament?