PARIS — Don’t watch Coco Gauff’s shots during her first-round match at the French Open against Taylor Townsend to figure out how her day is going.
Watch her eyes. Watch her shoulders. Watch her racket. She hit herself on the head with it in the middle of the Italian Open final against Elina Svitolina two Sundays ago.
Advertisement
“It didn’t hurt,” she said Friday in a news conference, as she prepares to defend her title at Roland Garros. “I had big braids.”
It’s been that kind of nine months for Gauff, a two-time Grand Slam champion and at 22, the biggest star in the women’s game. According to Sportico, Gauff was the highest-paid female athlete last year, earning $31 million in prize money and sponsorships.
After her quarterfinal loss to Svitolina at the Australian Open, cameras caught Gauff underneath the stadium, smashing her racket to bits. She thought she had found a private spot. She hadn’t. Her annoyance about that has led tennis tournaments to consider their strategy for the behind-the-scenes video that serves as catnip for fans.
Gauff has had a different strategy for handling her emotions lately, too, although that is not by design.
Advertisement
For most of her career, Gauff has rarely displayed anything close to a meltdown, rarely appeared to wrestle with the emotional demons that so often undo tennis players. She has an uncanny ability to ride the wave, fist-pumping and screaming with elation on her biggest and best shots to raise her level, without succumbing to the spirals that can accompany and usually accelerate dips in performance.
That has grown more challenging for Gauff in recent months. She has referenced off-court difficulties that have made staying in the moment on court harder. They have arrived as she has tried to maintain her lofty status among the sport’s elite, while remaking the two most important shots in the game, her serve and her forehand. That process, too, has nagged at her confidence and her resolve.
It has been a lot. Of late, the results have been going pretty well, even if getting to them has been all kinds of challenging.
Gauff is a perfectionist who is never truly satisfied unless she is lifting trophies. Still, since January, she has made two WTA 1000 finals, losing both in three hard-fought sets. Through it all, there has been plenty of harrumphing and thigh-slapping, a good bit of griping at her box. She will miss shots and raise her hand close to her face, shaking her head and talking to herself in that “how-can-you-make-that-mistake” fashion all tennis players know.
Advertisement
She would prefer it not be that way.
“I have a therapist that I have been going to for a long time, and also, just journaling,” she said in a French Open news conference Friday. She knows how wearing negativity can be, especially in a sport where even the best players lose nearly half the points.
“When I’m playing the matches, I just want to win literally every point in the most perfect way. Obviously, it just doesn’t always happen for me like that all the time.
“I think I can see where I want to be, and I want to be there so bad. But I’m just trying now to focus on the process: The ups and downs of the journey of tennis. It’s something that I can hone in on and do well at times, and other times I cannot do so well.”
Advertisement
Anger and frustration are occupational hazards in tennis, a lonely sport in which players fight mostly on their own for hours on a big court. Failure — all those lost points — is inevitable even on a good day. Figuring out how to hold it together is as important as having a sturdy backhand.
“I had a pretty bad attitude when I was younger, and my dad had a stern talk to me about it,” said Naomi Osaka, the four-time Grand Slam champion, in a news conference in Paris.
“I actually curse a lot,” she said. “I say it so softly you can’t hear it, and I’m really glad, because I don’t want to get fined for that.”
There are only a handful of players who can survive temperamental eruptions and win matches, seemingly using that eruption to clear the brain and create a hinge moment. Novak Djokovic is a master of it.
Advertisement
Aryna Sabalenka, the world No. 1, thought she was, too. Then, late last year, she realized she wasn’t. Opponents could sense that Sabalenka’s demeanor signified a collapse was underway. Gauff was one of them, standing across the net in last year’s French Open final. When it was over and Gauff had lifted the trophy, Sabalenka blamed the conditions, her poor play and Gauff’s fortune for the loss. She later apologized for not giving sufficient credit to Gauff. They have moved past it.
“I think my emotions were destroying my game, and my level was dropping dramatically when I would just, like, start overreacting on everything,” Sabalenka said during a news conference Friday. “My opponents would see that and they would step in and play better.”
Staying bottled up was impossible, but there was a middle ground. Her mindset and fitness guru, Jason Stacy, gave her a six-word mantra: “Don’t fight it. Don’t feed it.”
Sabalenka has learned to breathe her way through the anger, controlling her emotions by controlling her breath. She still loses, but only rarely does she beat herself. It’s been a win-win.
Advertisement
“Making sure that my opponent doesn’t see what’s going on in my head, and at the same time, to perform better and to stay in the zone,” she said. “It was a huge improvement over the years in my career and really helped me to level up.”
How well Gauff manages her emotions could go a long way toward determining whether she will successfully defend her title. She has been open about the process ever since the earliest stages of her career. In 2020, she wrote about it in a post for Behind The Racquet, sharing that she nearly walked away from tennis just before she broke out with her run to the fourth round of Wimbledon in 2019 at age 15.
“Going back to around 2017-18, I was struggling to figure out if this was really what I wanted. I always had the results, so that wasn’t the issue. I just found myself not enjoying what I loved,” Gauff wrote.
“I am trying to be transparent but also not, like, give the whole world my business, too,” she said after an early three-set comeback win over Solana Sierra at the Italian Open. It was filled with joyless body language, caused by Gauff losing touch with the relaxation routines, like going to her towel and breathing or eating some fruit.
Advertisement
“I want to be transparent and vulnerable, I want people to know we show up when we’re not always 100 percent perfect. It’s a fine balance,” she said.
Two matches later, Gauff found herself locked in a quarterfinal duel with Mirra Andreeva. With Andreeva up a set, Gauff was teetering as the Russian teenager tried to seize a second-set lead.
Gauff kept going, through the match and through the negative emotions. In the final set, she frittered away what was nearly a 5-1 lead, becoming too passive when the match appeared to be over, rather than forcing it to its conclusion.
When Andreeva saved a series of match points, something new happened. Gauff started pumping her fist after errors, reminding herself that she could lose points but still be playing great tennis against a terrific opponent.
Advertisement
Two matches later, in the final against Svitolina, the new habits were back. The smack on the head with the racket. The frustrated toss after she lost the first set, when she had been on the verge of winning it.
When it was over, after Svitolina had surged to the finish line, Gauff reflected on a long 10 days and the title defense that looms.
“This week, I experienced all the ups and downs of a tournament,” she said. “I’ve been down, had the lead, lost the lead, I’ve been in the final, been down match point. I think I’ve experienced every scenario. That can prepare me for Roland Garros. Hopefully, I can actually learn from each scenario and do better.”
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Tennis, Peak, Women’s Tennis
2026 The Athletic Media Company
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: Sports.yahoo.com
