A little over a month ago, the idea that Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula could enter the US Open as the two hottest players in tennis seemed preposterous.
Gauff endured a frustrating and frustrating spring and early summer. There was another one-sided loss to Iga Swiatek, the world No. 1, at the French Open, and then a first-round exit from Wimbledon.
Pegula again entered her quarterfinal wall at Wimbledon, despite having a break point for a 5-1 lead in the third set against Marketa Vondrousova, the champion. And as a doubles team, Gauff and Pegula lost in the French Open final and fell in the fourth round at Wimbledon.
Then came August.
There are essentially three women’s singles tournaments that matter during the North American hardcourt swing before it culminates with the US Open. Gauff and Pegula swept them.
On consecutive Sundays, Gauff won the Citi Open in Washington, DC, Pegula won the National Bank Open in Montreal, and Gauff won the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati. In the course of a month, they established themselves as legitimate contenders to win their country’s Grand Slam.
That can be a double-edged sword for Americans going to New York, where the spotlight burns the hottest, the distractions abound, and there’s so much noise, both literal and metaphorical. The subways and commuter trains roaring through the stadiums, the planes from LaGuardia roaring overhead and the people shouting from the stands represent the Sturm und Drang that together bring hopes and expectations. to the fans in town.
“Just embracing it,” said Gauff, 19, after the tournament in Cincinnati. It was the biggest victory of his career, especially since he defeated Swiatek, in the semifinals, for the first time. Gauff used to be 0-7 against Swiatekhad lost all 14 of their sets, heading into that match.
“Everyone’s path for you is not what’s real, not what’s going to happen,” said Gauff, who has played with heavy expectations since he made the fourth round at Wimbledon when he was just 15. “Even the path you want for yourself may not happen.”
Pegula, 29, came this time from the opposite end. A classic late-bloomer without the height or obvious athleticism of many top girls, she didn’t crack the top 100 until she was 25 years old. Now he is ranked third in the world, but he is often not mentioned in discussions of the best players in the world.
That’s not a bad thing for Pegula, who last week tried to keep things low-key, even as he headlined a junior tennis clinic in Harlem and bounced from a sponsor activity or interview with another.
“I didn’t think I’d be here, but at the same time, I’m very happy that I am,” Pegula said before hitting balls for more than an hour with some of the better young players. in Harlem.
As the US Open begins, American tennis is riding high on optimism. A year after Serena Williams retired, there’s a “who’s next” vibe running through the game. The US is the only country with two women in the top six. The country also has two people in the top 10 for the first time in years, with many eyes on last year’s breakout semifinalist, Frances Tiafoe.
That’s no small thing to handle.
“This is our home slam,” American Danielle Collins, 29, said in an interview last week. “You really want to be good.”
Collins arrived in New York for last year’s Open just seven months removed from a set to win the sport’s other hardcourt Grand Slam, the Australian Open, where he lost in the finals to world No. 1 Ashleigh Barty.
Last year Collins didn’t know how she would react to what awaited her at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. Organizers schedule him in a series of feature night matches, and he finds himself drained of energy and the surreal experience of living through something he dreamed of as a child watching- look at the televised tournament. In the moments when his heart trembled, he focused on slowing down his breathing, sometimes alternating his breathing from one nostril to the other.
“It’s going to be weird, but you have to play like you don’t care,” said Collins, who made it to the fourth round before falling in three sets to Aryna Sabalenka.
That’s easier said than done, especially for Gauff and Pegula, who know they’re in one of those rare moments in their careers where their form and their fitness are at the forefront and they’re full of confidence.
In July, Gauff was frustrated by his recent results, the shakiness of his forehand and the dichotomy between the progress he felt he had made in training and his inability to secure important victories. He added a new coach to his team that should be familiar to anyone who has been paying attention to tennis, especially in America for the last 40 years.
Brad Gilbert, the former pro and ESPN commentator who coached Andre Agassi and Andy Roddick, spent much of his coaching time last year making Zendaya, the actress and singer, an available tennis player for his part in the movie “Challengers” due next spring, about a professional tennis love triangle.
Gilbert, 62, was keen for another gig with a top player, and began interviewing Gauff’s parents and agent after his Wimbledon loss. Gauff was reluctant.
For Gauff, Gilbert’s coaching success mostly happened before he was born, he said with a chuckle during the Citi Open. That said, Gilbert started with Agassi and Roddick before they won the US Open. And his tweaks to his strokes, making them a little shorter and more controlled and reminding him at every turn of his athletic supremacy — no one covers the court like Gauff these days — began to showing instant results.
“It can be true, anyone who watches me play knows what I have to do,” Gauff said in Washington when asked if there was a conflict between Gilbert and Pere Riba, the coach he hired in June. “You know, they know, the fans know.”
As for Pegula, he said he let the sadness of his Wimbledon loss pass for a few days. But when he got home to Florida, the relentless tennis schedule forced him to start mapping out his US Open training plan – gym sessions, court time, treatments with his physiotherapist.
Then he went to Montana for a few days. He rode a horse and fished. He immersed himself in the natural beauty and felt renewed.
However, he arrived in Montreal feeling a little under the weather and apathetic. His initial goal was just to survive the first game, and he did. Three days later, she defeated Swiatek in the semifinals, then won the final, 6-1, 6-0, defeating an exhausted Liudmila Samsonova, who had been forced to play her rain-delayed semifinal match earlier that day. day.
Pegula bounced back from her round-of-16 loss in Cincinnati to Marie Bouzkova and heads to New York, where she tries to let the energy of the city and the fans flow through her tennis, especially when she takes the court. with Gauff for doubles.
“I remember even last year,” he said. “We lost the first round, but we had an amazing crowd.”
More of that is on the way.