By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Sunday, September 29, 2024
after split with Brad Gilbert after a 14-month partnership which brought her first major title, Coco Gauff has supported her team, adding coach Denis Shapovalov Matt Daly.
Gauff, who reached the round of 16 in Beijing on Sunday and is now 2-0 with Daly as her coach, says she hopes to continue the partnership for the rest of the season and into 2025. The 20-year-old American will also continues her relationship with the coach for many years Jean-Christophe Faurel.
Daly, 45, played college tennis at Notre Dame and graduated from South Bend in 2001. He reached 941 in the ATP rankings in 2003.
Daly co-founded Grip MD along with Mark Merklein (a current co-trainer of Jessica Pegula). According to Facebook, he specializes in helping players make control changes: “Since graduating, Matt has coached juniors and high-level professionals for twenty years, specializing in technique and especially grip changes . Matt has also worked with top 100 ATP players on control changes.”
Improved serving of Gauff targets
The No. 1 focus for sixth-ranked Gauff is to shore up the serve that plagued her during her US Open title defense. The American’s serve went off the rails during her fourth-round loss to Emma Navarro, while she threw 19 two errors in her second straight loss to her rival.
“There are other parts of my game that I want to work on as well, but the focus right now is serving,” Gauff. said WTA Insider Courtney Nguyen this week. “When I serve well, I play really well. For me, that’s the basis for my game.”
Gauff says the changes will be subtle rather than drastic.
“Already, what little we’ve done has made a drastic improvement to where I was three weeks ago,” she said. “At this point, there’s not a crazy amount of, like, going through a whole technical change or resetting everything. It’s just subtle things that, doing it for a week now, will help me.”
Gauff will face either Naomi Osaka or Katie Volynets in the round of 16 in Beijing.
