By Richard Pagliaro | Wednesday, August 20, 2025
Photo credit: Ben Solomon/Getty
Coco Gauff has served up a surprise ahead of this US Open.
The reigning Roland Garros champion has fired former coach Matt Daly just four days before the US Open begins on Sunday. Gauff has retained Jean-Christophe Faurel, her long-time coach, to her team. Both Faurel and Daly were in the box when Gauff rallied past world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka to capture her second career Grand Slam title on a windswept day at Roland Garros.
Journalist Ben Rothenberg confirmed Daly’s ouster earlier today.
Today, Gauff replaced Daly on the US Open practice courts with biomechanical coach Gavin MacMillan, who worked with Sabalenka to fix her previously wayward serve. Sabalenka has credited MacMillan with showing her video of flaws in her serve and helping her correct them to the more streamlined motion that has helped her rise to world No. 1 and reach four of the last seven major finals.
The 2023 US Open champion Gauff’s serving woes hit a nadir in Montreal this month where Gauff coughed up 43 double faults in three matches en route to the quarterfinals.
Gauff committed 23 double faults—nearly a full set of doubles—in her opener vs. Danielle Collins yet still squeezed out a 7-5, 4-6 7-6(2) victory relying on her grit and legs to get it done in two hours, 56 minutes.
The WTA Finals champion confirmed her disappointment in the serving woes after she skipped Washington, DC to work extensively on sharpening her serve for this North American hard-court season. In Montreal, Gauff said her serve was “on a crutch.”
Though the two-time Grand Slam champion has the ability to compartmentalize serve struggles, shirk stretches of shoddy play and fight furiously with the match on the line, it hasn’t been holding up as the competition intensifies in later rounds. When Gauff lost to 18-year-old Canadian sensation Vicky Mboko in Montreal, the Canadian teenager looked more comfortable on serve than the American.
“I mean, there’s positives and there’s negatives,” Gauff told the media in Montreal. “Obviously I am so disappointed in myself when it comes to that part of the game just because I didn’t play D.C. to work on that and made changes to that and doing well in practice and serving really well in practice. Yeah, so I just would like for it to transfer to the match.
“It does give positives that, okay, I’m winning these matches having literally like one part of my game on a crutch. So it’s like if I can stand on both feet, then I can only imagine that it would be a lot more straightforward and a lot more easier for me.”
The July training block came months after Gauff spent a few days in the offseason working with former No. 1 Andy Roddick on serve. Gauff said working with Roddick she tried to lower her toss a bit to make the serve motion easier to replicate under pressure. Still, when Gauff gets tight she sometimes nets the serve or puts the toss too far in front and has sometimes struggled to pronate on kick serves.
Is Gauff pressing the panic button so close to the start of the season’s final Slam?
Or is a proactive Gauff making the right and long due move to try to fix the most glaring weakness in her game?
In a video conference call with the media today to promote ESPN’s US Open coverage starting on Sunday, analysts Mary Joe Fernandez and Patrick McEnroe both endorsed Gauff’s decision as “a smart move” and “a gutsy move” to try to improve rather than stand pat with a serve that simply isn’t working right now.
“She’s got a problem with the serve and trying to address it,” ESPN analyst Mary Joe Fernandez told the media in today’s video conference call. “I think it’s a smart move to go to someone who’s had success in Gavin with Sabalenka.
“[Sabalenka] played through her serving issues. She didn’t take the time off. She kept competing and he was with her at events, including the US Open, a few years ago. So I think it’s a smart move for Coco. We’ll see. We’ll see if she has enough time here for it to work and sink in with the changes. We’ll find out what those changes are for her.”
Former U.S. Davis Cup captain Patrick McEnroe suggests the first step toward solving a stroke issue is admitting it exists and endorses Gauff’s decision to change coaches.
“I think it’s a gutsy move by Coco to hire a new coach right before [the US Open],” Patrick McEnroe told the media. “It’s very unusual for a top player [to do]. Tennis players, you’re out there on your own, you don’t want to admit you have a weakness.
“The fact she’s so open about: I need to deal with this, I need to try to fix this. The last coach she hired when she parted ways with our Brad Gilbert were supposed to be technical-type coaches as well.
“This guy is taking it to another level—this biomechanical coach that she’s brought on—so clearly she believes it can be fixed. I believe it can. She’s such a great athlete that it should be more solid but the women’s game now it’s not as top-heavy as the men with the Big 2. But you sort of see a gap with the Top 3—Sabalenka, Iga and Coco—there’s a bit of drop off to Pegula, who is the fourth seed who hasn’t played as well recently having reached the final at the Open last year.”
Working with Brad Gilbert in her corner when she won the US Open, Gauff opted to spin a high percentage of first serves and rely on her backhand, legs and competitiveness to beat back opponents.
Now, Gauff is trying to reconstruct the serve and make it a weapon as it was when she first broke out reaching the Wimbledon fourth round.
