We all have our bad days. Except ours usually don’t come in a stadium-full of 23,000-plus tennis-mad ticketholders, broadcast for all the world to see.
Struggling in her primetime second-round matchup with Croatia’s Donna Vekic on Thursday at the 2025 US Open, American Coco Gauff felt what she would call “the worst I’ve ever felt on the court”. In her own words, it had been a “rough couple of weeks”.
The world No. 3 had been struggling on the court (she amassed 23 double faults in one match against Danielle Collins in Montreal), and in an effort to find a fix for her troubled serve, swapped out her coach just days before the US Open.
Working it out in real-time in Arthur Ashe Stadium, it all became too much. Trailing 4-5 in the opening set, the emotions began to creep in during the changeover. She was visibly shaking.
“I think it was just nerves and just pressure, honestly, and I’m someone who usually can thrive on that,” said the third seed, who still managed to rally for a 7-6(5), 6-2 win. “There’s been a lot on me this tournament, more than usual, which I expected coming in. Basically, what you saw out there was what it was, and I was able to reset through it. But it was a challenging moment for me on the court.”
After closing out the win, the 21-year-old, who’s shouldered outsized expectations since, as a 15-year-old she stepped into the global spotlight at Wimbledon, stunning idol Venus Williams en route to the Round of 16, she addressed the crowd, which included, among others, Olympic legend Simone Biles. That’s when the tears began to flow.
“When I’m out there in that moment, I kind of give into the pressures, but I feel like that’s normal,” Gauff reflected afterward. “I feel like every pro athlete who’s been on the pedestal that I’ve been on has felt that pressure at some point in their career, where they showed it publicly like I did, or privately.”
“Being able to do that in front of a stadium and kind of break down and go through whatever she was going through inside and then still be able to win the match, to come out on the other side? I mean, that takes guts,” said Gauff’s countrywoman Jessica Pegula, one spot away from her at No. 4 in the WTA Rankings.
“Ashe is really overwhelming. Not only are you playing out there, but you’re trying to win, and then you feel like you’re failing, and then you’re crying, and then you still win — that’s even harder than not showing any emotion at all.”
“It showed that she was human,” Pegula continued. “I think sometimes fans don’t understand that tennis isn’t life or death, but when you’re out there and you’re doing something that you’ve worked your whole life for and you feel like something is not working, she hit a point where she couldn’t hold it in anymore. It probably helped her that she cried and got it out of her system. It's not always healthy to keep everything in.”
Pegula is known as a stoic presence on court; rarely one to fist pump or overly accentuate her success or failures. But the 31-year-old baseliner, who last year broke through to her maiden Grand Slam final at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, can more than relate to Gauff’s emotional outpouring.
“Clearly, she was struggling, and that’s what she needed to do in that moment to overcome it, and she did,” Pegula said. “It’s not easy having to go out there with a lot of pressure, with her trying to change things on her serve, with having to step out there and feel like you’re failing in front of an entire stadium. That’s really tough.”
“I don’t think outsiders really understand how complicated that is, how difficult it is, and how you have to be pretty fearless to go out there and do that. That’s why I’ve always loved our sport, because I feel like we’re willing to go out there and fail in front of everybody, and it’s just us. It’s not like you have other teammates that maybe dropped the ball or missed a pass, or there’s someone else you can put the blame on, or a coach. No, it’s just you out there, and that’s really difficult and something that makes our sport really, really tough.”
