Rising star Coco Gauff believes her roller coaster performance in the second round of the Lexington Open where she at times struggled with her serve was more mental than technical.
The 16-year-old scored another milestone win in her career on Wednesday after stunning second seed Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (2), 4-6, 6-4, to book a place in the quarter-finals. The victory was Gauff’s third over a top 15 player on the WTA Tour and the second this year after Naomi Osaka at the Australian Open.
“I think my mentality pushed me to win,” the world No.53 said after the match. “We’re both playing good tennis, and had our ups and downs in the match. At the end of the day, it came down to a couple close points.”
It was by no means a straightforward encounter for Gauff who looked at time shaky behind her serve. During the match, she was broken seven times in total and hit eight doubles faults. An almost identical tally as Sabalenka who dropped serve the same amount of times but hit 11 double faults. Furthermore, Gauff only won 40% of her second service points compared to 64% of her first.
Reflecting on her latest victory, the teenage sensation said she gives an ‘A’ to her performance with the exception being her serve. Quizzed about what the exact problem was, Gauff blamed the mental side for the issues.
“Everything was an ‘A’ except for my serving. I definitely served better in my first match than today, but you’re going to have good and bad days, and I like to go for my serves, so that’s the give and take,” she said.
“I think my serve today was more mental than technical. Towards the end of the match, I started serving better, and I may have been overthinking at some points.”
There were also positives to be taken from her latest encounter. Gauff’s ability to absorb the powerful shot-making coming from across the net frustrated and flustered Sabalenka. On top on that, a series of angle shots combined with her own powerful hitting kept Gauff in contention throughout despite the blips.
“I can always improve, and I always believe I can improve, but this was also only the second match,” she stated.
“I thought I would be much more nervous coming into my matches, but I actually wasn’t, and I just have this mentality to have fun and enjoy the competition. That’s what I’ve been doing, and I would say it’s better than I thought it would be, especially because last week, my practices weren’t so good. This is definitely a big improvement from then.”
Gauff’s next test will be a showdown with Tunisia’s Ons Jabeur who defeated Olga Govortsova in three sets in her second round match. Jabeur is ranked 14 places higher and became the first Arab woman to reach a Grand Slam quarter-final earlier this year at the Australian Open.
