As Coco Gauff begins life post-Brad Gilbert, she has pinpointed the area of her game that she is focusing on more than any other.
The 20-year-old is a superstar of the game and following her US Open triumph in 2023, many expected her to continue progressing this season.
But after a solid first half of 2024, a disappointing summer of results saw Gauff fail to defend the US Open title and subsequently dropped out of the WTA’s top five.
Coco Gauff has now entered the Asian swing ready to finish the season on a positive note and she knows exactly what she needs to work on to try and achieve that.
Which part of Coco Gauff’s game is she focused on improving the most?
Gauff possesses an abundance of talent and she has arguably the game’s best backhand and court coverage skills.
But her serve and forehand have been glaring weaknesses at times and these tend to be the shots that cost her dearly in matches.
This is especially the case with her serve, which has produced WTA-top 100 high of 315 double faults this season, and her first serve percentage is down at 57%, the joint-second lowest number in the top 10.
Therefore, knowing how much she has struggled on serve at times this year, Gauff knows she needs to improve her serve and make it a reliable and consistent weapon.
“There are other parts of my game that I want to work on too, but the focus right now is the serve. When I serve well, I play pretty well. For me, that’s the basis for my game,” she told WTA Insider.
“Already, the little bit we’ve done has made a drastic improvement to where I was three weeks ago. At this point, there’s not a crazy amount, like going through a whole technique change or resetting everything. It’s just subtle things that, doing it for a week now, will help me.”
Who is Coco Gauff’s new coach?
After Gauff ended her year-long partnership with coach Brad Gilbert, it was announced that Matt Daly is now part of her coaching team alongside Jean-Christophe Faurel.
The 45-year-old is a former collegiate tennis player and he last coached the ATP’s Denis Shapovalov in 2023.
They began working together a week before heading to Beijing for the China Open and Gauff is looking forward to learning as much as she can from Daly.
“I’m really excited,” she added. “I think this is probably what it will look like next year too. I’m super excited for a new change and hopefully to improve other parts of my game.
“Working with Brad was really great and obviously we had a great partnership. I think it was just time to do a reset, a refresh, and add some things in my game that I felt like I need to do to have a better season next year.”
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