Former world No 1 defends Coco Gauff by invoking Carlos Alcaraz and Rafael Nadal after Wimbledon heartbreak
Andy Roddick has come to the aid of Coco Gauff after she threw away a match point in her Wimbledon semi-final loss to Karolina Muchova.
The American dropped the first set 6-2 on Centre Court, before rallying with a commanding 6-1 second set. The match reached a crescendo in the final set tiebreak, which involved both players spurning match point chances.
The most memorable of those was when Gauff hit a powerful first serve at 9-8, and instead of blasting away a short forehand, the 22-year-old dumped a tame drop shot into the net.
Muchova kept her cool, played the more attacking tennis, and got over the line to take the tiebreak 12-10 and advance to her first Wimbledon final, where she will face fellow Czech Linda Noskova.
After the match, the two-time major winner had a glass-half-full attitude, perhaps because she was just a point away from a Wimbledon final and had previously never gone past the fourth round at SW19.
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Gauff stressed that the drop shot had worked out for her well this fortnight, so it may have been the right play, just the wrong execution. Now, former world No 1 Roddick has defended the American.
The former US Open champion said that Carlos Alcaraz’s ability to hit masterful drop shots may have changed the narrative around when or when not to use that tactic and that even the all-time greats get nervous.
He said on the latest episode of Served, “I’ve been thinking about this for two weeks. No one ever, ever, ever post Carlos Alcaraz calls a drop shot a bad decision anymore. Everyone is kind of fine with it.
“The win percentage of points where people hit a drop shot, Roland Garros vs Wimbledon. What do you think the differential is? 58% points won at Roland Garros, about 50% at Wimbledon. And yet the volume hasn’t really changed.
“It’s a bad play on grass most of the time. And Coco has been hitting that shot; we’ve been celebrating her variety this entire tournament. I don’t know, sometimes you miss a shot.
“She was tight. Yeah, that’s what happens when you’re about to go to a Wimbledon final. The goal is to be better at being nervous. [Roger] Federer got nervous and Rafa [Nadal]. You think of him as this guy, this gamer, this competitor, he’s like, ‘I had such anxiety I had a hard time drinking water sometimes’.”
Roddick also branded Muchova a “complete player” and that if Gauff ever wins Wimbledon, she will look back on the 2026 championships as the year she cracked grass.
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