Coco Gauff isn’t hiding that she wanted to do better in recent weeks but insists that she won’t be killing herself over another painful defeat in Indian Wells.
Following a quarterfinal outing at the Australian Open, the world No. 3 picked up surprise back-to-back losses in her opening matches at the WTA 1000 tournaments in Doha and Dubai.
After arriving in Indian Wells, Gauff took a moment to tell reporters that there was no need for an overreaction or anything like that. And the American – who celebrates her 21st birthday on Thursday – beat Moyuka Uchijima and Maria Sakkari to snap her four-match losing streak but then lost to Belinda Bencic in the round-of-16.
What’s rough about the Bencic loss is the fact that the 2023 US Open champion had 40/0 on her serve at 4-4 in the third set before the Swiss stormed back to win that game and eventually complete a 3-6 6-3 6-4 win.
Gauff asked if she was concerned about this ‘kind of slump’
“Overall I feel like it’s not as bad as it seems, I guess, start of the year, I did well at United Cup and lost to Paula fourth round in Australia. Middle East wasn’t a great swing for me,” the world No. 3 assessed.
“Here I lost 6-4 in the third in the fourth round against a tough opponent who’s coming off a 500 win. Obviously I wanted to do better, want to have better results, but it’s not something I can crush myself on. I’m trying to do better, and that’s all I can do. I’m trying to work on things in practice, and unfortunately right now it’s not translating how I’d like to.”
Next week, Gauff will try to do better in Miami and make her first deep run in two months. However, it should be noted that Miami hasn’t been a happy hunting ground for the 21-year-old as she didn’t make it past the round-of-16 in any of her past five appearances at the tournament.
Tennis World USA