{"id":232342,"date":"2025-10-22T11:33:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T11:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/232342\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T11:33:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T11:33:07","slug":"coco-gauff-looks-to-djokovic-sabalenka-after-major-change-tennis-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/232342\/","title":{"rendered":"Coco Gauff looks to Djokovic & Sabalenka after major change – Tennis – Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tennis star Coco Gauff<\/a> has admitted to using Novak Djokovic<\/a> and Aryna Sabalenka<\/a> as inspiration in her efforts to adapt her serve ahead<\/a> of her WTA Finals defense in Riyadh.<\/p>\n

November 1 will see the WTA Finals get underway in Saudi Arabia, with the total prize money for the event standing at a record $15.5 million<\/a>. The winner of the tournament will receive over $5 million.<\/p>\n

Gauff, 21, has enjoyed an undulating 2025. Earlier this year, she won the French Open, coming from a set down to beat Sabalenka in stunning fashion. However, she followed that up with a first-round exit at Wimbledon and a fourth-round exit at Flushing Meadows in the US Open.<\/p>\n

Back in August, Gauff opted to make a change to her coaching team just days before the US Open<\/a>, parting ways with coach Matthew Daly. In Daly’s place, Gauff hired serving specialist Gavin MacMillan to help fix her serve – with the latter having previously helped Sabelenka do the very same thing.<\/p>\n

During her stellar but young career, Gauff’s serve has come under fire. However, the two-time Grand Slam winner has admitted ahead of her WTA Finals title defense that she has used Sabalenka and Novak Djokovic as inspiration when it comes to revamping her serve.<\/p>\n

“I was looking at Novak and he’s someone who didn’t have as great of a serve in the beginning of his career, obviously different issue than me, but he just wasn’t serving as strong,” said Gauff, speaking to The National<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“And he made that change and has gone on to obviously be Novak Djokovic. And even at that time, he was still like a successful player.<\/p>\n

“So yeah, I\u2019ve drawn on those experiences. And obviously Aryna and Venus and those who’ve done those changes.<\/p>\n

“I think [Lorenzo] Musetti, even recently, we were at US Open on the court, sharing the court together, both of us serving, we both changed our serve recently and we were laughing about it.<\/p>\n

DON’T MISS…<\/p>\n

She added: “So yeah, just seeing that other players, it’s just inspiring knowing tennis is won by small margins and those little differences make a difference.<\/p>\n

“And I know if I want to get to the scale that I want to get to, I have to make those changes.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tennis star Coco Gauff has admitted to using Novak Djokovic and Aryna Sabalenka as inspiration in her efforts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[4909,64,63,18937,3592,85,747,6414],"class_list":{"0":"post-232342","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-aryna-sabalenka","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-coco-gauff","12":"tag-novak-djokovic","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-tennis","15":"tag-tennis-section"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}