ROD LAVER ARENA — Coco Gauff could not have started her US Open final rematch with Aryna Sabalenka much worse.
She lost the first seven points of the Australian Open semi-final and, having only got a single point on the board courtesy of a trademark Sabalenka volley into the net, saw her serve broken straight afterwards.
But it is a testament to Gauff’s mental resilience and tremendous rally tolerance that she was able to battle back and force a first-set tie-break, the first Sabalenka has had to play in the whole tournament, before losing in straight sets to the Belarusian 7-6 6-4.
Her ability to hang with the biggest hitters in the world, running down untold power and forcing the likes of Sabalenka and Elena Rybakina to hit one, two or three more shots in every rally, makes her an incredibly difficult player to put away baseline-to-baseline.
However, Gauff’s problems really seem to start when she gets the tennis ball in her hand. Her first serve is fast, certainly – she hit the fastest serve of the tournament at 124.9mph in the eight game of her semi-final defeat – but surprisingly ineffective when you look at points won.
On Thursday night, she only triumphed in only 65 per cent of points where she got her first serve in, and her tournament average has only been 71 per cent. The elite servers of the women’s game have been up above 75, in Sabalenka’s case 77.
And the numbers only get worse behind her second serve. Gauff’s “points won percentage” of 45 when she misses her first serve is ranked 55th in the tournament, and she served 26 double faults across her six matches, including six in the first set against Sabalenka.
Gauff revealed earlier this month that she spent a few days working in the off-season with Andy Roddick, the 2003 US Open champion, former world No 1 and arguably the best server of the 21st century.
Jim Courier, another who previously topped the world rankings, revealed that Roddick had told him they had worked together on “release point of the toss, getting it a little higher, keeping the ball in her hand a little longer to try and make it more consistent”.
That level of technical detail is strictly for the off-season, or perhaps mid-season non-tournament weeks, but definitely not for the service line during a semi-final.
Instead, Gauff said she was trying to adapt her gameplan after feeding the Sabalenka forehand too much with her second serve.
“I’ve played her so many times so [pressure on second serve] is just a part of it,” Gauff said.
“Sometimes she’s gonna miss and sometimes she’s going to make winners. Today she was hitting winners.
“On my second serve, in the second set [I was] trying to place it better. I feel like if I would have placed it better – because I don’t think it’s a speed thing, whether it’s faster or not, she’s stepping in regardless – I think that the placement, I was just hitting it right to her forehand, and so she knew where it was going every single time.
“I want to work on that in the future.”
Future is the operative word. This is her last grand slam as a teenager, but it is incredibly her 18th, and even so at 19, Gauff is the youngest player to reach the Australian Open semi-finals since Nicole Vaidisova in 2007.
“I am really proud of myself. I did want to win a slam as a teenager, and I did that,” last year’s US Open champion Gauff added.
“Obviously today I was hoping to give myself a chance to get No 2. It didn’t happen, but I feel like I’m there. Hopefully I can go only upwards from here.”
Vaidisova never made it back to the last four of a grand slam and retired at the age of 21. Such a fate does surely not await Gauff, already one of the most mature and intelligent players on tour. Time is very much on her side. She will come again.