{"id":525641,"date":"2026-03-10T00:25:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T00:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/525641\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T00:25:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T00:25:10","slug":"coco-gauff-retires-injured-for-only-second-time-in-her-career-against-alex-eala-at-indian-wells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/525641\/","title":{"rendered":"Coco Gauff retires injured for only second time in her career against Alex Eala at Indian Wells"},"content":{"rendered":"

INDIAN WELLS, Calif. \u2014 Coco Gauff<\/a> retired injured for just the second time in her career at the BNP Paribas Open<\/a>, after sustaining an injury to her left arm against Alex Eala<\/a> in the third round.<\/p>\n

Gauff received medical treatment toward the end of the first set when down 5-2.\u00a0A trainer massaged her left shoulder as well as her forearm; in between sets, they applied a compression bandage to Gauff\u2019s left forearm.<\/p>\n

By that time, Gauff had lost the opening set, and when Eala broke in the second game of the second set, Gauff walked to the net.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt it, like, the second game of the first set. I guess a simple way to put it, it felt like a firework was going off inside of my arm, and then my whole arm felt like it was on fire,\u201d Gauff said in quotes circulated by the tournament.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing told that it\u2019s probably something nerve-related. Never had anything like this before, never felt anything, a sensation like this before,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Eala did not notice Gauff\u2019s retirement initially, and the American leaned on the net before her opponent turned and walked forward to embrace her. Eala opened her on-court interview by thanking all the women who had paved the way in tennis on International Women\u2019s Day, and Gauff for her own stature in the sport.<\/p>\n

Gauff\u2019s only other mid-match retirement was in 2022, against Marie Bouzkov\u00e1 of the Czech Republic at the Cincinnati Open.<\/p>\n

The injury to her left arm was particularly problematic against Eala, because of how Gauff\u2019s strongest shot, her two-handed backhand, allows her to dominate left-handers. During the American\u2019s issues with forehand consistency, her backhand has always been stable. Against Eala and other lefties, Gauff can use her backhand against their forehand crosscourt.<\/p>\n

She can also loop her forehand down the line into their forehand, to set up that rally pattern; her forehand down the line is her most stable expression of that shot, especially when she uses heavy topspin or slice.<\/p>\n

Gauff said that it was a forehand when she first felt the injury.<\/p>\n

That was how she started quickly against Eala, but persistent double faults kept reeling her in. Gauff was hitting the ball aggressively on first and second serves, accelerating particularly on the latter. But her contact point and racket path were not giving her the topspin she needed to keep the ball in the service box, with most of her double faults flying long at over 100 mph.<\/p>\n

Eala, who is into the fourth round at Indian Wells for the first time, adjusted well through the first set, asking Gauff to play her forehand crosscourt and throwing in drop shots as Gauff attempted to change pattern by going down the line.<\/p>\n

Eala, the No. 31 seed, will face No. 14 seed Linda Noskov\u00e1 in her next match. Gauff will need to assess her injury ahead of the Miami Open, another WTA 1000 event which follows Indian Wells. She said she will have an MRI after experiencing the first injury situation in which she did not know what was wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"INDIAN WELLS, Calif. \u2014 Coco Gauff retired injured for just the second time in her career at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-525641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525641","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=525641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}