Coco Gauff reveals why she rehired her former coach and discusses her big clay-court goal

Coco Gauff believes linking up with her former coach Jean-Christophe Faurel was too good an opportunity to turn down as she revealed why they went their separate ways initially.

Faurel started working with Gauff when she was 14 and he was also part of her set-up during her Wimbledon breakthrough in 2019 when she became the youngest-ever player to qualify for the grass-court Grand Slam at the age of 15 years and three months.

But the partnership came to an end in 2020 and Gauff has made several tweaks to her coaching personnel since then with Brad Gilbert joining last year while Felipe Ramírez also joined at the beginning of 2024.

And Frenchman Faurel has now also linked up with the team ahead of the clay-court season with Gauff confident he will have a big impact as she gave more detail about their split four years ago.

“It actually wasn’t either of our choices to stop working together,” the reigning US Open champion said. “He was having visa issues and couldn’t get into the US for a long time, a couple years.

“So once he got that all figured out and it became a perfect opportunity and the timing worked to be back together, I knew when we had stopped I always wanted to go back to him when all of that stuff got sorted.”

READ MORE: Coco Gauff: 5 key stats behind US No 1’s clay court career

She added: “It’s nice to have someone on my team that knows me since I was young and knows me well. So I’m really, really excited to have him back on the team.

“Yeah, it’s good. I’m glad that the government let us be together again.”

Gauff will kick off her clay campaign at the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix on Wednesday as she will face Sachia Vickery in the second round.

She didn’t have the best of seasons on the red dirt last year as she lost in the third round in Stuttgart, Madrid and Rome while she made a quarter-final exit from the French Open.

“For the clay-court season this year, I’m really optimistic,” Gauff said. “Obviously the goal is to win French Open, but that’s every season of any top player. Your goals should be to try to win the big tournament.

“But I’m not looking at French Open right now. I’m focused on Stuttgart. I want to try to win Madrid or Rome or here. The last time I won a clay-court title was a couple years ago if I’m not mistaken, so I kind of just want to get a recent clay title under my belt. So any of the ones along the next couple weeks would be nice.”