{"id":117694,"date":"2025-08-29T04:51:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T04:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/117694\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T04:51:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T04:51:08","slug":"coco-gauff-beats-donna-vekic-on-a-surreal-tearful-night-at-the-u-s-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/117694\/","title":{"rendered":"Coco Gauff beats Donna Veki\u0107 on a surreal, tearful night at the U.S. Open"},"content":{"rendered":"

FLUSHING MEADOWS, N.Y. \u2014 As Coco Gauff<\/a>\u2019s second-round U.S. Open match against Donna Veki\u0107<\/a> awaited its 12th game, a surreal scene unfolded on Arthur Ashe Stadium. Upbeat music blared around the arena as 24,000 spectators watched Gauff, the world No. 3, practice her serve while Veki\u0107, last year\u2019s Olympic finalist in women\u2019s singles, received medical treatment to her right arm.<\/p>\n

Minutes prior, Gauff had been shaking as she sat down in her chair down 6-5, having just been broken on the back of serving two double faults. The American has laid herself bare for her most important tournament of the season by attempting to remodel her serve in real time, and against Veki\u0107 she was double-faulting in the extreme. <\/p>\n

Serves flew close to the baseline, even as she took pace off the ball. Gauff had been in tears at a previous changeover, living out something close to a serve anxiety dream on the biggest stage in the sport. In a post-match news conference she said it was \u201cthe worst I\u2019ve ever felt on the court.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it was just nerves and just pressure, honestly, and I\u2019m someone that usually can thrive on that. There\u2019s been a lot on me this tournament, more than usual, which I expected coming in. So yeah, basically what you saw out there was what it was, and I was able to reset through it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tears had flowed again as she thanked the crowd in her on-court interview for giving her \u201cso much joy\u201d during the match, reflecting on a \u201ctough couple of weeks\u201d and her pride in having managed her way to a 7-6(5), 6-2 win.<\/p>\n

While Gauff was practicing the most important shot in tennis in front of the whole world, Veki\u0107 was having her hitting elbow examined while waiting to serve to take a one-set lead and not faring much better. Gauff, meanwhile, started to speak to her team, urgently trying to analyze what was going wrong.<\/p>\n

The man brought on to fix her serve, Gavin MacMillan, had been offering encouragement throughout.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With Veki\u0107\u2019s medical timeout ticking down, Gauff hit five serves in a row onto pretty much the same spot, a couple of feet from the T. A boost, or a horrendously exposing exercise? Watching in real time, it felt like both.<\/p>\n

Eventually, play resumed, and a compromised-looking Veki\u0107 began and ended the next game with a double fault to be broken to love. She hit nine in the first set to Gauff\u2019s seven, with both players visibly stressed by the weight of the pressures they were playing under. The United States Tennis Association promotes tennis as \u201cThe World\u2019s Healthiest Sport\u201d; at times like this, it appears anything but.<\/p>\n

Gauff won the tiebreak 7-5 and picked up an early break in the second when Veki\u0107 made four errors, three unforced, to be broken to love again. A couple of games later, Veki\u0107 had nothing left to give, and conceded another break to give Gauff the chance to serve out the match. She double-faulted on her first match point, but flicked away a backhand winner on the second.<\/p>\n

The roar of celebration after was full of relief \u2014 that she was through to the third round, but also that this was over.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I just show people what it\u2019s like to be a human, and I have bad days, but I think it\u2019s more about how you get up after those bad moments and how you show up after that,\u201d Gauff said afterward about the challenge of trying to transform her game while the world watches.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think today I showed that I can get up after feeling the worst I\u2019ve ever felt on the court.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Photo: Clive Brunskill \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FLUSHING MEADOWS, N.Y. \u2014 As Coco Gauff\u2019s second-round U.S. Open match against Donna Veki\u0107 awaited its 12th game,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117695,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-117694","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}