However, it has not been smooth sailing for the American since then, with Gauff losing in the first round of Wimbledon<\/a> and the fourth round of the US Open<\/a>.<\/p>\n After a disappointing US Open for Gauff<\/a>, she has now been told she made a big mistake before the tournament even started.<\/p>\n Gauff has really struggled on serve<\/a> throughout her drop-off in form since winning Roland Garros, including hitting 23 double faults in one match since then.<\/p>\n After she continued to struggle with her serve in Cincinnati, Gauff parted ways with coach Matt Daly<\/a> just days before the start of the US Open.<\/p>\n Gauff then brought in Gavin MacMillan<\/a>, a biomechanical specialist who has previously helped Aryna Sabalenka<\/a> with her serve.<\/p>\n This appeared to make some improvements to Gauff\u2019s serve<\/a>, but she still lost in the fourth round to Naomi Osaka<\/a> in an emphatic straight sets defeat.<\/p>\n When speaking about Gauff on Court-Side with Beilinson Tennis\u2019 US Open recap show, Tennis Hall of Fame journalist Steve Flink admits he cannot understand why they made this decision so close to the tournament. <\/p>\n Instead, Flink thinks that Gauff<\/a> should have waited until after the US Open and then taken some time away from the WTA Tour<\/a> to work on her game.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I don\u2019t understand is the coach MacMillan,\u201d said Flink. \u201cI don\u2019t understand what their thinking was to be doing this on the eve of the Open. <\/p>\n \u201cI mean, it\u2019s an impossible task, and she was very emotional and teary at the changeovers at times and understandably so, because this was so difficult for her to be worrying so much about her technique while you\u2019re trying to win a major.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, I don\u2019t get why they just didn\u2019t let her play, leave that stuff alone until after the Open, then say, you know what we\u2019re skipping the next three tournaments. Maybe not even play the rest of the year in the fall or just play one tournament in the year end, but take a significant amount of time off and then work on it, because they just put her in the worst possible plight by doing what they did. <\/p>\n \u201cSo, I agree with you, she was a good sport about it all. I don\u2019t get the thinking of her coach throwing all this at her with no time to adjust. And you could see by the time she played Naomi, she was a mess. And Naomi was terrific, but Naomi almost every second serve went to Coco\u2019s forehand and she got so many errant returns as a result. And they weren\u2019t necessarily great second serves, but Naomi was smart. <\/p>\n \u201cAnd then Naomi also from the baseline just during the rallies just kept pounding at the forehand and played a relatively conservative match by her standards and just kept extracting errors. I felt badly for Coco. Again, she handled that loss well, but it was so inevitable that something like this was going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n Coco Gauff\u2019s schedule for the rest of the 2025 season<\/p>\n Despite Flink\u2019s plea for Gauff to take some time away from the match court, that does not appear to be in her plans for the rest of the year.<\/p>\n When she was asked about her schedule for the rest of the year, Gauff revealed she was still planning to go to Asia<\/a>.<\/p>\n The world number three still has many points to defend, with Gauff winning the China Open<\/a> and the WTA Finals<\/a> last year.<\/p>\n WTA TournamentRanking points Gauff has to defendChina Open1000 (Won the title)Wuhan Open390 (Semifinals)WTA Finals1300 (Won the title)<\/p>\n Gauff has not yet officially qualified for the WTA Finals, but she is all but confirmed as she is third in the race.<\/p>\n The 21-year-old can confirm her qualification to the year-end tournament in Riyadh at her next tournament in Beijing, which begins on Wednesday, September 24.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coco Gauff did not have the US Open that she would have wanted to this year. Gauff is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146228,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[5113,99,90654,428,11883,654],"class_list":{"0":"post-146227","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-coco-gauff","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-steve-flink","11":"tag-tennis","12":"tag-us-open","13":"tag-wta"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146227","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=146227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Coco](\"https:\/\/cdn1.thetennisgazette.com\/uploads\/78\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-2233591205-1024x683.jpg\")
Photo by Sarah Stier\/Getty ImagesSteve Flink does not understand Coco Gauff\u2019s coaching decision before the US Open<\/p>\n