NEW YORK—You won’t see many second-round post-match interviews as emotional as the one Coco Gauff gave after her 7-6 (5), 6-2 win over Donna Vekic at the US Open on Thursday.
Gauff got tearful thanking the Arthur Ashe Stadium crowd for pushing, urging, cheering her on through a match that was never easy, and looked at times to be doomed to end in disaster for her.
“It’s been a rough couple of weeks,” Gauff said, referring with her well-publicized struggles to fix her serve. “You guys bring me so much joy.”
“I’m doing this for myself, but I’m also doing this for you.”
Gauff’s gratitude was understandable. For much of the first set, she looked as if she were about to drown in front of 20,000 people.
After her previous match, she had seemed cautiously optimistic about her progress on her serve. Improving it was, according to her, just a matter of reps now. But that optimism quickly looked misplaced tonight.
She started double faulting right away, and was broken in the first game. Silence reigned in Ashe. A little later, after double faulting to go down 4-5, she looked up toward her team with a look of defeat. She spent the changeover with her face in her towel. Two games later, Gauff hit a second serve as hard as she could, missed it by three feet, and was broken again. This time she was shaking on the changeover. The silence was even deeper now.
“It’s an uncomfortable watch,” Mary Carillo said in the commentary booth.