She is widely considered the best pure athlete in tennis, with unmatched court coverage. She has an often devastating two-handed backhand. Her serve can be devastating as well, occasionally firing at close to 130 miles per hour. But on Tuesday night at the Canadian Open in Montreal, she served the most double faults in a WTA Tour match<\/a> since 2019, when Je\u013cena Ostapenko hit 25 against Karol\u00edna Pl\u00ed\u0161kov\u00e1 at the China Open in Beijing.<\/p>\n So casual tennis fans might see that Gauff beat Danielle Collins, another Floridian, 7-5, 4-6, 7-6(2), while giving away a set\u2019s worth of points for free and wonder how the first line of this article is an accurate statement, rather than a portal back to the meme of the 2010s.<\/p>\n But the bigger question, as Gauff prepares to play Veronika Kudermetova in the third round on Wednesday, is how she or any player could possibly win a match like that \u2014 and what it says about tennis if one of its standard-bearers is setting a benchmark to which no one, including Gauff herself, would aspire?<\/p>\n The answers are both simple and complicated. They have everything to do with the unique mental and physical talents of Gauff, who is probably one of only a couple of players capable of turning in such a performance. They relate to the intricacies of the tennis scoring system. They address what it takes to thrive in women\u2019s tennis at this moment, as well as the entire sport\u2019s self-image.<\/p>\n Ever since she broke out in 2019, when she was 15, Gauff\u2019s serve has been her greatest weapon and also her Achilles\u2019 heel. It\u2019s a tennis god\u2019s idea of a cruel joke. She can scare the lines a dozen times in a row in a warm-up before a match, then walk onto the court and serve a dozen double faults, spinning 68 mph offerings into the bottom of the net.<\/p>\n She reached her breaking point last September at the U.S. Open, during a three-set loss to Emma Navarro. Navarro beat Gauff 6-3, 4-6, 6-4, knocking her out of a second Grand Slam in a row. Gauff\u2019s 19 double faults in their fourth-round match didn\u2019t do her any favors.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want to lose matches like this anymore,\u201d Gauff, the vanquished defending champion, said at the time. She fired Brad Gilbert, the coach who had helped insulate her other main weak point, her forehand, from opponents\u2019 attacks.<\/p>\n She hired a grip specialist named Matt Daly to work alongside long-term coach Jean-Christophe Faurel. Daly tweaked her hand position on her racket. It was coming too far round from a continental grip \u2014 the default for a serve \u2014 toward an eastern backhand grip. Some players make a slight shift in this direction because it makes it easier to add topspin to a serve, which gives it safety. But Gauff was doing it too much and spooning her serves rather than spinning them. Daly even had her mark her grip so she would know where to place it whenever she stepped to the line.<\/p>\n It appeared to work. She won titles: the WTA 1,000 China Open in Beijing; the WTA Tour Finals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and the United Cup in Australia, a season-opening team competition.<\/p>\n Then the serve troubles started again. The indoor conditions in Riyadh and parts of the United Cup meant fewer variables could mess with a technical change that needed time to bed in. On faster courts, where opponents can hammer returns that skid through the court and don\u2019t give her time to recover, she became more vulnerable.<\/p>\n Then, on the slower red clay of Roland Garros, especially in swirling wind during the final against world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka<\/a>, Gauff maximized her mastery of adversity as Sabalenka unraveled. Regardless of how Gauff is serving, her engine, defense, and ability to retrieve just about any shot are there. From point to point, she gets balls back. Between those points, her opponents have to think about how good they need to be to get the ball by her. Their margins get smaller. They start to miss. Gauff tends to win.<\/p>\n Late in the third set of a match, after a gut-busting point, she is taking calm breaths very quickly through her nose. She does not wear down physically, and she sure didn\u2019t on Tuesday night in Montreal, playing her best tennis during the deciding tiebreak after having lost three consecutive games from 4-2 up in the third set.<\/p>\n Gauff is blessed with a short memory when she needs to have it. Whatever just happened has no impact on what can happen next; she plays each point on its own merit.<\/p>\n Collins served for the match at 6-5. Gauff broke her and forced a tiebreak, then rolled, as though she\u2019d been playing sparkling tennis all night. She ended the match with an ace, an improbably fitting display of that ability to produce when it matters most, even after so much has gone wrong in the preceding hours.<\/p>\n Nowhere was that more obvious than behind her second serve \u2014 yes, the shot she missed 23 times in one match. Collins cranked away on so many of the ones that ended up in the court. She connected for winners on plenty of them. But Gauff was able to scramble her feet to get behind the returns, getting enough of them back to stay in her second-serve points far more effectively than Collins stayed in her own.<\/p>\n At the end of the night, Gauff had won just 17 of 53 points on her second serve. That ratio would spell doom for most players, but Collins won just 19 of 55, so they were close to even. Gauff lost 23 of those 53 second-serve points because she didn\u2019t get the ball in play, so when she did put the ball in the court, she won 17 of 30. That\u2019s over 50 percent, the benchmark any top player wants.<\/p>\n Collins only double-faulted 13 times, so she won 19 of 42 when her second serve went in. That\u2019s 45 percent, far from terrible, but not in the elite 50-plus territory.<\/p>\n The two players hit a comparable number of winners: 30 for Gauff, and 29 for Collins. At first glance, their unforced error totals were comparable, too. 74 for Gauff; 80 for Collins.<\/p>\n However, double-faults are unforced errors. Factor that in and Gauff had a much \u201cbetter\u201d night off the ground, with 51 unforced errors compared with 67 for Collins. Still, no one wants to hit 51 unforced errors in a match.<\/p>\n Gauff pretty much matched Collins in the attacking categories, such as first-serve percentage and points won on first serve, and break point chances created and converted. She won more points, 118-116.<\/p>\n In most of the more defensive categories, such as points won on second serve, break point chances allowed and lost, she was about the same, too. The one area Collins was far better at was double faults. So Gauff did a good enough job of not letting her serve troubles have a catastrophic effect on the rest of her game. She stayed in a match she essentially had no right to win, with a bit of help from her opponent, and got the job done.<\/p>\n Collins was left in disbelief on several occasions during her Canadian Open match against Gauff. (Minas Panigiotakis \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n After Gauff\u2019s similarly tenacious French Open win over Sabalenka, the world No. 1 intimated that she lost the match more than Gauff won it<\/a>. Sabalenka later apologized<\/a> for a point of view that still holds sway over what makes tennis \u201cgood\u201d: that the first-strike, aggressive, attacking player should be the best. But movement and the ability to flip defense to offense are increasingly the difference-makers at the top of the WTA Tour, something Sabalenka, who has developed her squash-shot slices and front-court variety in the past year, knows better than anyone. Quality is a moving target \u2014 especially when the ATP Tour-owned Tennis TV is labeling a passive 52-shot rally between Alexander Zverev and Adam Walton as \u201cthe highest quality.\u201d<\/p>\n It was Gauff\u2019s ability to use those difference-makers that got her over the line in Montreal, and a deciding tiebreak was an advantageous place to do it. It\u2019s a good format for her, especially on a bad serving night, because she never has to serve more than twice consecutively. It\u2019s simple. First to seven survives and advances. Try not to give away points with errors. Make the opponent hit extra shots with everything on the line.<\/p>\n Before their tiebreak on Tuesday night, Gauff had won 10 of 12 deciding tiebreaks in her professional career. Collins had won three of nine. Gauff didn\u2019t make an error on any of the nine points they played; Collins made three to help Gauff to a 5-2 lead \u2014 one on a backhand that went long off a twisting, slicing playground forehand that Gauff improvised. Gauff won another point with a shanked forehand that turned into a perfect lob. Collins dropped her racket in disbelief, as she did a few times as the match went away from her.<\/p>\n Gauff took it from there with the ace, knotting the story of the night and her ability to forget the past with its most worthy ending. There\u2019s a reason \u201cFlorida woman wins tennis match\u201d has become a more common headline over the past six years.<\/p>\n \u00a0(Top photo: Robert Prange \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida woman serves 23 double faults in a top-tier professional tennis match and wins. Coco Gauff, 21, was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-50550","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\/50550","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=50550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Danielle-Collins-Coco-Gauff-Montreal-scaled.jpg\")
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