Why Coco Gauff’s latest defeat will leave a lasting scar that will be hard to remove

Kevin Palmer
Coco Gauff in action
Coco Gauff reacts

For a set and a half against Aryna Sabalenka, Coco Guaff played the best tennis match of her life – and then disaster struck.

Gauff is still only 20 and for most players, mental lapses of the kind we saw in her Wuhan Open collapse against Sabalenka would be considered normal for a young player.

Yet Gauff has never followed the ‘normal’ rules of tennis and that is why her latest demise will be given the most intense of scrutiny.

The basic facts of this match confirm that Sabalenka fought back to end Gauff’s nine-match winning streak and secure a third straight appearance in the final of the Wuhan Open, where she will meet home favourite Zheng Qinwen.

American Gauff had taken the opening set and then moved 4-2 ahead in the second to seem on course for victory, only for her serve to falter as world number two Sabalenka recovered to win 1-6, 6-4, 6-4 in two and a half hours.

Sabalenka maintained her unbeaten record in Wuhan as Gauff, who won the China Open in Beijing last week, produced another double fault on match point – a 21st in total.

That statistic will be the defending memory of this match and it is a number that will haunt Gauff.

Her all-round game was far too much for Sabalenka to handle for most of the match and when she broke serve in the second set, it appeared, she was on course to continue her thrilling run in Asia.

Yet the serving issues that derailed Gauff’s US Open defence last month came back to bite her once more and this now appears to be a mental as much as a technical issue with her serve.

The young American has spoken publicly about changing a grip on a key shot and most experts believed that may be the serve after her woes at the US Open.

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Yet when the winning line was within sight for Gauff, she blinked in alarming fashion as the serve collapsed in devastating fashion.

It was hard not to have sympathy for Gauff as she looked pleadingly towards her box as she looked for answers to the problems, but finding solutions during a match is never easy.

The double fault she threw in to end the match summed up her despair, with Sabalenka offering some support as she also fought with serving challenges a couple of years ago.

“I know what she’s going through,” said Sabalenka. “This is really difficult. This is really tough, but I know that she will overcome this serve situation.

“She’s already one of the best players, but I’m pretty sure she’s going to be one of the greatest players.”

Sabalenka added on the WTA Tour website: “I was just trying to put as much pressure on her as I can so she would go even crazier on her serve.”

In Saturday’s other match, fifth seed Zheng beat compatriot Wang Xinyu 6-3, 6-4 in the first all-Chinese semi-final at a WTA 1000 event.

Olympic champion Zheng continued her fine run through the Asian swing to book a place in a first WTA 1000 final, setting up a repeat of the 2024 Australian Open final, which was won by Sabalenka in straight sets.

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