John McEnroe has speculated on what Coco Gauff will do next after failing to defend her US Open title.
The 20-year-old entered the final Grand Slam of the season following successive defeats in Toronto and Cincinnati.
Many hoped the memories from last year at Flushing Meadows and the support of the home crowd would help Coco Gauff to rediscover her best tennis.
But for the second successive Grand Slam, Gauff lost to compatriot Emma Navarro in round four and this brought an end to a disappointing summer of tennis for the American.
What does John McEnroe think Coco Gauff will do after the US Open?
Since Gauff’s exit from Wimbledon in July, she has not been as steady on court. Her serve and forehand has become more erratic and unreliable over the past two months, and her confidence playing those shots has decreased with each crushing defeat.
Therefore, Gauff has been growing more frustrated on court in recent times, which is something John McEnroe pointed out during a conversation with Eurosport Tennis.
Following her run of poor results, the seven-time Grand Slam champion thinks Gauff will ponder making some changes to her team moving into the final portion of the season.
This would be a bold move given she added Brad Gilbert to her team just a year ago, before having the best run of her career in the summer of 2023.
“I don’t know about what is going on in her team, but I suspect there will be changes, that’s my guess,” McEnroe said. “When she made the change last year and brought in Brad, it spurred her on and she had this great run in the hard court season.”
Coco Gauff reflects on a busy tennis summer that yielded poor results
Much was expected of Gauff over the hectic tennis summer which included Wimbledon, the Paris Olympics and the North American hard court swing which culminated with the US Open.
But she failed to reach at least the quarter-finals at any of those events, and she has fallen to World number six as a result.
Following her US Open defeat, Gauff cut a disappointed figure, but she has the belief in herself to turn her results around.
“It’s not the summer that I want,” she said. “I feel like there’s 70 other players in the draw that would love to have the summer that I had even though it’s my least probably done well during this time of the year.
“So many people want to be in the fourth round. So many people want to make the Olympics. So many people want to be the flag bearer. It’s perspective.
“Obviously because I’m wanting to reach a different level, it is disappointing, but I’m not going to beat myself up and be, like, this was so bad. Yeah, I expect better, but at the end of the day it happened, and I know I can turn it around.”
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