Coco Gauff told how she can become ‘No 1′ by Serena Williams’ ex-coach
Serena Williams’ ex-coach Rick Macci has claimed that Coco Gauff could “stay” as the world No 1 if she were to make major changes to her serve and forehand.
Gauff is currently ranked third in the WTA Rankings, having reached a career-high of world No 2 in June 2024.
Serve and forehand struggles have proven a significant issue in recent months and led to her split with coach Brad Gilbert last September, after a 14-month partnership.
Gauff then hired grip specialist Matt Daly and saw an upsurge in form in the aftermath of that, winning both the China Open and the WTA Finals last Autumn.
However, she has struggled again in recent weeks.
The world No 3 was beaten in the opening round of both the Qatar Open and Dubai Tennis Championships and then struggled during her Indian Wells campaign.
Gauff hit 21 double faults and 74 unforced errors in her opening win against Moyuka Uchijima and then hit six double faults in a single game while serving out her third-round victory versus Maria Sakarri.
The former US Open champion was then beaten 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 by Belinda Bencic in the fourth round.
Writing on Twitter/X, Macci – who worked with both Serena and Venus Williams, and Maria Sharapova, among others – claimed that Gauff should look to change her serve and forehand to ATP-style strikes.
He wrote: “Losing makes the problem bubble up.
“With an athlete like Coco it makes ZERO sense as I said 2 years ago not to Biomechanically modify the forehand/second serve. It can be done easily.
“If she went into combat with ATP forehand / Platform serve no doubt be number one but most of all stay there.”
Despite her defeat, Gauff arguably had a better serving day against Bencic than she had against both Uchijima and Sakkari in her earlier matches.
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“We kind of changed a lot of things with the serve,” said Gauff afterwards.
“I don’t want to get into specifics of it, but I went on the practice court after the first day [versus Uchijima] and then after the other day [versus Sakkari].
“You know, I still think I could have served better. I was obviously more consistent, but definitely want to get more aggressive with it. It was kind of one of those things where I started the tournament not serving well, so it’s more so just trying to get it in.
“I mean, I hit some good serves today, but I feel like, especially in that last game, up 40-0, I probably could have went bigger in those moments.
“But yeah, it is an improvement, and hopefully can continue to do better from here.”
Gauff will look to put those improvements into action when she returns at the Miami Open next week.
The 21-year-old is set to be the third seed at the event, behind world No 1 Aryna Sabalenka and world No 2 Iga Swiatek.
It will be Gauff’s sixth appearance at the WTA 1000 event and she will be hoping for her first deep run at the tournament, having never previously made it past the fourth round.
She was beaten at that stage of the event a year ago by Caroline Garcia.
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