Coco Gauff made fun of herself over a miscue with the Australian Open just around the corner and pointed to Carlos Alcaraz as a master of his craft.
Tennis star Coco Gauff has joked that she still has a lot of work to do to hone her drop-shot, comparing it unfavorably to 20-year-old Spanish phenom Carlos Alcaraz.
Gauff made her comments as she prepared for the Australian Open this month. On Saturday, she reflected on a “really bad” drop-shot attempted in a victory over Emma Navarro in the semi-finals of the ABS Classic.
“I couldn’t do anything but laugh,” Gauff told reporters. “Sometimes It’s like that. I was working on my drop shots, I’m not Carlos Alcaraz. But the goal is to be somewhere with the drop shots.
“I did hit one good one today, so I’m happy with that. Hopefully, I can continue to get better, but that one bounced two feet in front of me, it was hilarious. I rate my drop shots a six out of 10. But they’ve saved my life in some scenarios, so I can’t get too upset at them.”
Continuing her self-criticism, Gauff added on her miscue: “I don’t even know what that was, it landed on my side. It has to be the worst shot of the year, they need to pull that up at the end of the year.”
The 19-year-old won the US Open last year and reached the French Open final in 2022. Her best result at the Australian Open was a fourth-round appearance 12 months ago, where she lost to Jelena Ostapenko.
Alcaraz, meanwhile, has enjoyed breakout success of his own, triumphing at Wimbledon last year. Gauff has said she tries to watch his matches for inspiration whenever possible. “Carlos in Cincinnati, he was losing a set every match pretty much and he wasn’t playing his best, that was clear,” she told reporters last year.”
Gauff added: “The way that he was still smiling against [Hubert Hurkacz] and he was down a set and a break or something like that, I don’t know, he was down crazy or down match points. He was still smiling.
“If he [Carlos Alcaraz] can smile, he’s No. 1 in the world and he has all this pressure, he’s supposed to beat Hubi on paper, then I can do it in situations maybe where, most of the time now I’m not the underdog, but against, for example, like Iga [Swiatek] or Sabalenka [Aryna], those where I’m considered the underdog on paper, I can smile too.”
Gauff even became frustrated during the 2023 US Open when a broadcast dispute meant she couldn’t see the live tennis action from her hotel room TV. ESPN pulled all programming from Spectrum, the second-largest cable company in the US, over a contract negotiation deadlock. The issue has since been resolved.
