Coco Gauff Reportedly Stops Working With Serena Williams' Former Hitting Partner
WTA
Coco Gauff has stopped working with Serena Williams's ex-hitting partner, who joined her camp in early April last year, as reported by a reliable source.
According to Portuguese journalist Gaspar Ribeiro Lança, the partnership between Gauff and Jarmere Jenkins appears to have run its course. Jenkins worked as Serena Williams' hitting partner after the 23-time Grand Slam champion gave birth to her first child in 2017.
Jenkins is a former tennis pro on the ATP Tour with a personal best ranking of World No. 190, but his career was cut short due to financial constraints. After trying his hand at a corporate job that lasted only three months, he took over a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity when Serena Williams came calling.
Jenkins transitioned to become a hitting partner for his legendary compatriot and served in that role for five years before Serena retired from professional tennis in September 2022. With such an ostentatious resume, Coco Gauff hired Jenkins.
The pair started to work together in April 2023. It was nothing unusual for both of them because Gauff had known him and his brother Jermaine (former hitting partner of Venus Williams) since her early teenage years, and that familiarity was welcomed.
However, Jenkins was not in attendance during Gauff's successful title defense at the ASB Classic in Auckland this past week. In a tweet revealed by Gaspar Ribeiro Lança, Gauff has recruited Felipe Luna, who is an interim coach of Portugese ATP player Gastao Elias.
The journalist has since shared his conversation with Elias, who spent the off-season training in Florida and even hit with Gauff. The former World No. 57 lifted the lid on Gauff's partnership with Jenkins and disclosed that the American had offered his coach an offer.
"It's a funny story because I was doing the off-season with Felipe Luna. One day we went to the USTA grounds and I had some hitting sessions with Coco."— Elias as quoted on raquetc.com (translated from Portuguese)
"We were talking about traveling together for some weeks because my coach (Guilherme Balboa) is going to be a dad soon, but then he told me Coco Gauff had stopped working with Jarmere Jenkins and wanted him to go to Auckland and Melbourne with her. I immediately said he had to accept it otherwise I'd beat him."
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