“Learning from the hard losses is the only thing you can do. If you try to forget about it, then you will never learn and never improve,” Coco Gauff once said after a tough fourth-round exit at the 2023 AO. She didn’t bury the pain, she used it as fuel. That same year, Gauff blazed through the tour, capturing her 1st Grand Slam at the US Open and a WTA 1000 title in Cincinnati. By 2024, she ruled the court at the WTA Finals, hitting a career-high ranking and topping the charts as the highest-paid female athlete. However, 2025 has been a rocky road so far. Her form has dipped, and a nagging serve issue haunts her game. Still, Coco remains fearless, openly owning her struggles and vowing to sharpen her serve!
Coco Gauff burst into 2025 with fiery momentum, leading Team USA to the United Cup crown and storming through Australia with nine wins in her first ten matches. But the spark dimmed as heartbreaks piled up! A tough R16 loss at Indian Wells and the Miami Open followed first-round exits in Dubai and Qatar. It’s been a rocky ride ever since.
When the clay season kicked off in Europe, Coco showed glimpses of her grit, cruising into the QF before falling to Italy’s Jasmine Paolini in straight sets. And recently, in a candid moment, Coco opened up about the toughest hurdle in her game right now: her serve. She’s committed to fixing it, one ball toss at a time.
Talking to Vogue magazine, the 4th seed added, “When you’re changing things, results don’t always happen right away. I’m trying to serve better. I’m trying to return serve better. It’s tough to find the timing, but you have to accept that you’re not going to get it right right away–and that eventually, everything will come,”
Coco Gauff’s serve continues to be her Achilles’ heel, and with the French Open just weeks away, the pressure to fix it is mounting. In Stuttgart, her QF clash against Paolini ended in a frustrating 6-4, 6-3 defeat. Despite having beaten Paolini in their previous two meetings, Gauff once again crumbled when it mattered most. Serving at 5-4 in the opening set, two untimely double faults gifted Paolini the momentum. It was a familiar pattern, moments of brilliance undone by shaky service games.
The stats, too, paint a worrying picture. Gauff currently leads the entire WTA Tour in double faults for 2025. With 121 double faults in just 18 matches, she sits ahead of Ashlyn Krueger (119 in 23 games) and Marta Kostyuk (118 in 18 games). In contrast, top seed Aryna Sabalenka has served only 33 doubles in 23 matches, while Iga Swiatek has 66 in 27. These numbers underline just how disruptive Gauff’s serve has become—not just in tight moments but across her entire campaign.
A finalist at Roland Garros in 2022, Gauff is no stranger to clay. It’s a surface where she thrives. But unless she regains command over her serve, another Grand Slam title may remain just out of reach. And right before her Madrid Open starts, she shared her candid opinion about the tournament.
“Turn it around any week,” Coco Gauff shares her candid opinion before her first match at the Madrid Masters
Most elite athletes live between chasing perfection and knowing it’s unreachable, and Coco Gauff is no exception. At just 21, she’s already a GS champion, a WTA Finals winner, and a former 2nd seed. Yet, perfection still eludes her. Entering the Mutua Madrid Open, Gauff is seeking to rediscover her best form after a rollercoaster stretch.
Her red-hot 9-0 start to 2025, including leading Team USA to the United Cup and making the AO quarter-finals, has cooled to a 14-6 record, just 5 wins in the last three months. For someone who holds herself to sky-high standards, that kind of slump stings. But Gauff is evolving mentally. Ahead of her Madrid campaign, she shared how she’s learning to embrace the ups and downs, letting go of the need to be flawless in every match.
“I’m definitely someone who strives for perfection. And it’s something that I’ve been working on,” Coco added. “And I think perfectionism is something that makes me good, but can also be a bit of a bad thing, too. I always thought I was that type of person that needed matches to bring confidence. And then a lot of my results just came out of nowhere, with maybe not as many matches doing well. I started to believe that you can just turn it around any week. And just as quickly as you can go on a tear, you can also lose,” the American explained.
With a 2-0 H2H lead over Yastremska on clay, Coco Gauff has every chance to ignite her clay-court season in style. A strong win here could be the spark she needs to build confidence and momentum heading into the prestigious Roland-Garros. What do you think?
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