Lindsay Davenport: All eyes will be on Coco Gauff’s serve at 2025 US Open

NEW YORK—Coco Gauff will conclude first-round action at the 2025 US Open, the 2023 champion set to play her first match since shaking up her coaching team and hiring biomechanic expert Gavin MacMillan to address recent serving struggles.

“All eyes are going to be on the Gauff serve, and how does she approach the first serve,” former world No. 1 Lindsay Davenport said on Tennis Channel Live ahead of Gauff’s match against Ajla Tomljanovic. “There’s been years where she’s gotten up there and gone for really aggressive first serves. Then, this year, she’s kind of stepped back from that, maybe because she hasn’t wanted to hit a lot of second serves. The double faults were a problem this summer.”

Gauff was on top of the world only two months ago when she shocked world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka to win her second Grand Slam title at Roland Garros, but the 21-year-old has suffered from a reoccurrence of serving yips since leaving Europe. She struck double-digit double faults throughout matches at the Omnium Banque Nationale and the Cincinnati Open, where she lost in the fourth round and quarterfinals, respectively.

Just days before the US Open was set to begin, it was revealed Gauff had parted ways with coach Matt Daly and hired MacMillan, the coach responsible for reworking Sabalenka’s serve in 2022 and paving the way for her 2023 major victory and rise to No. 1.

“For me, I just want to get better,” she said in her Media Day Press conference on Friday. “I'm obsessed with the process of getting better. Yeah, sometimes maybe it hurts because I get obsessed with it too much.

“I feel like I have a clear future where I see myself and I feel like I'm really close. I think this aspect of the game will bring everything together for me.”

Gauff is set to face Tomljanovic for the first time on hard courts, having beaten the Aussie on clay last summer at the Summer Olympic Games. Davenport argued that even a solid, if unspectacular serving day, would be enough to get the job done Tuesday night on Arthur Ashe Stadium.

“If she is able to only double fault two, three, four times a match like most top players, she’s going to have so much more confidence in the other parts of her game. But when the double faults start, it seems like she starts to feel a little insecure out there and she starts to pull back a little bit. She always competes so hard but the reason why she made a coaching change a week before a Grand Slam was to not have the issues here in New York.”

Fellow TC analyst and former Australian Open semifinalist Chanda Rubin echoed Davenport’s sentiment and forecast Gauff among the favorites to win the title in spite of her serving woes—largely due to the American’s unparalleled athleticism.

“The defense that she can bring, she can stay in any match regardless of how she’s serving,” said Rubin. “For a lot of players, the serve would have taken them completely out of some of these matches. They would not have been able to function. But Coco Gauff, she continues to be able to find ways to win.”

Still, former world No. 1 Jim Courier worried Gauff could be in for a tough draw, noting Tomljanovic’s victory over Serena Williams at this very tournament in 2022.

“She’s no pushover,” said Courier, looking through Gauff’s section of the draw. “[Donna] Vekic also can crack the ball. Noami Osaka could also be a challenge. Can she get past [Daria] Kasatkina? She’s clever, crafty. It’s never going to be easy to win a title like this. You’re always going to run into people who are feeling it as the tournament rolls on.”

In a section largely comprised of big-hitters, Rubin countered, Gauff could have an advantage, again owing to her defense.

“These are early round matches she’ll be able to work her way into,” she said.

Gauff—and her serve—will face that first test tonight, opening Day 3’s night session on Arthur Ashe Stadium.