Serena Williams was on-site in New York for the 2024 US Open, and the former WTA player was asked to advise struggling Coco Gauff on what she could do next.
Williams is a legendary tennis player who is probably the greatest female tennis player ever. She’s been a tremendous force for many years, smashing opponents left and right.
What made her so dominant was the sheer amount of power she could generate while being precise. Few tennis players can hit the ball really hard, but very few of them have that kind of control over that, which is what separates the likes of Aryna Sabalenka, Elena Rybakina, and Iga Swiatek from the rest.
It’s also what separated Serena Williams at her peak from the rest. Another thing she did well was serve, as she had one of the best serves we’ve ever seen in women’s tennis.
It made everything she did a lot easier. So, as someone with a dominant forehand and a really strong serve, Williams was asked about what should be next for Gauff, as those are the two shots that she struggles with the most.
The former US Open champion is a tremendous player with lots of talent, but she seems to have hit a wall. Her forehand has been incredibly inconsistent, and her serve serve isn’t what it could be either. Williams, though, wouldn’t change any of it, as she told ESPN.
"I feel like she has a good serve. I think that it can obviously be better, but I feel like she’s so young. She has the rest of her career to just improve. I wouldn’t change anything on her forehand. I’ve seen a lot of interesting forehands."
"And listen, if you’re just confident in whatever you have, keep it up, and just be confident about it. That’s literally all she needs to do is just have confidence, whether she’s hitting it with her wrist or elbow. Just have confidence doing it."
Having confidence is really sound advice, but it's not something that's as easily done as just saying it. It takes time to truly develop that, and ultimately it comes down to the weapons a player has.
If the weapons don’t do what they’re supposed to, then it’s really hard to build trust in them. Gauff’s forehand has been inconsistent for a very long time, and while it holds up at times, it’s still more problematic than not.
Her serve is also hit-and-miss, and it cost her the match against Emma Navarro. The number of double faults she had, 19, was impossible to overlook.
She's already worked on it before, but perhaps more must be done. It can be done, as Aryna Sabalenka proved with her own serve transformation, but time will tell whether Gauff figures it out.
Unless she addresses some of those worries in her game, she will unlikely hit her peak as a player, which would be a shame because she has historic talent.
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