Coco Gauff's Long Game

"At the start of her first-round match in the U.S. Open, this past Tuesday, Coco Gauff-the winner of the U.S. Open two years ago, the reigning champion of the French Open, and the No. 3 player in the world-tossed up the ball as she began her service motion, and then, thinking better of it, let the ball fall. Ordinarily, no one would note this sort of thing. Tournaments don't keep stats of caught tosses, which are perfectly legal. But this was not an ordinary situation."

"The timing of the move, and the decision to reconstruct her serve while also playing her biggest tournament of the year, was unusual, if not unprecedented. Most players on this level don't tinker much at all with their mechanics, let alone invite millions of people to watch them learn something new. Every toss would rise and fall in the spotlight."

Coco Gauff fired coach Matt Daly and began working with Gavin MacMillan, a serve specialist, immediately before the U.S. Open. She is deliberately rebuilding her service motion during her home Grand Slam, trading power for precise mechanics to correct a problematic toss and body extension that contributed to repeated double faults. During early play she deliberately hit an eighty-two-mile-an-hour serve to focus on knuckle rotation, scapular tilt, elbow angle, and toss placement. The work requires conscious thought about minute movements that can disrupt automatic athletic responses. The timing is unusual among elite players, though others have also tweaked serves recently.

Read at The New Yorker