{"id":175843,"date":"2025-09-28T17:38:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T17:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/175843\/"},"modified":"2025-09-28T17:38:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T17:38:10","slug":"coco-gauff-says-what-is-so-tough-about-playing-leylah-fernandez-after-knocking-her-out-of-the-china-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/175843\/","title":{"rendered":"Coco Gauff says what is so tough about playing Leylah Fernandez after knocking her out of the China Open"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Coco Gauff came through a tricky match with Leylah Fernandez to make the last 16 at the China Open. <\/p>\n

The American player is looking to get back on track after a pretty underwhelming US Open<\/a> campaign. <\/p>\n

Gauff was critiqued for one aspect<\/a> of her game at Flushing Meadows, and the fourth-round defeat to Naomi Osaka<\/a> offered more questions than answers. <\/p>\n

Gauff admits to using the China Open as a practice tournament<\/a>, and after beating Leylah Fernandez<\/a>, it\u2019s clear that she does enjoy the competition. <\/p>\n

\"CocoPhoto by WANG ZHAO\/AFP via Getty ImagesCoco Gauff makes Leylah Fernandez claim<\/p>\n

Gauff didn\u2019t play amazing tennis against Fernandez, but she did get the job done and progress into the last 16. <\/p>\n

After the match, she was quizzed on playing Fernandez and delivered an insight into just how tough it is to play against the Canadian performer. <\/p>\n

She said in her press conference: \u201cYeah, I mean, the conditions were so slow, which I feel like she does well with that because she likes to take the ball so early. So I felt like my heaviness wasn\u2019t doing a lot with her, like, as the balls got older.<\/p>\n

\u201cI found that when I had new balls, I would win like two or three games in a row. I think the toughest part was just dealing with the conditions and trying to feel like I could hit through her, but I couldn\u2019t do that as well today as I felt like I did earlier this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I played Leylah earlier this year and I knew it was going to be a tougher match today just because I felt like she was playing some good tennis. She beat Maria, like, in a good score. All the matches she won in DC. I knew she would approach this match differently. I had to adjust. But I\u2019m happy to get through.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gauff has serious problem to solve<\/p>\n

Although Gauff won the French Open in 2025, there are still some real concerns over the number of double faults she produces in games. <\/p>\n

Despite winning in three sets, Gauff still managed six double faults against Fernandez, and the service game remains an Achilles heel for the American. <\/p>\n

At 21, she\u2019s got bags of potential and is clearly an amazing player, but this situation could stop her from dominating tournaments like Aryna Sabalenka<\/a> does at the moment. <\/p>\n

Hopefully, Gauff can get more matches under her belt and keep plugging away at the service situation with the WTA Finals<\/a> on the horizon. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coco Gauff came through a tricky match with Leylah Fernandez to make the last 16 at the China…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[49,48,4305,82,4306],"class_list":["post-175843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-coco-gauff","tag-sports","tag-wta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}