Coco Gauff’s Long Game

You’re reading The Sporting Scene , Louisa Thomas’s weekly look at the world of sports.

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.

Right before the Open started, Gauff’s home Grand Slam, she had fired her coach Matt Daly, and announced that she was now working with Gavin MacMillan, a serve specialist. The timing of the move, and the decision to reconstruct her ser