Coco Gauff Hopes to Reach Elena Rybakina’s Level of Serve Consistency: “She’s the Best on Tour”

Coco Gauff topped the list of double-fault count on the WTA Tour last year.

Coco Gauff Hopes to Reach Elena Rybakina’s Level of Serve Consistency: “She’s the Best on Tour”

Elena Rybakina, Coco Gauff (Image via X/OptaAce, coco's cap !)

In Short
  • Coco Gauff struggles with double faults, recording over 120 this season.
  • She aims to improve her serve consistency to match Elena Rybakina's level.
  • Gauff reached the quarterfinals of the Miami Open despite her team's concerns about her health.

One thing that’s pretty common in Coco Gauff‘s matches is double faults. In her opening-round match against Elisabetta Cocciaretto, Gauff hit 11 double faults before her three-set win. Against Alycia Parks, the tally was eight. In her fourth-round match against Sorana Cirstea, she hit six double faults.

The double faults are troubling Gauff so much that she ended up crying during a match at the US Open last year. She hired Gavin MacMillan, the biomechanics specialist who helped World No.1 Aryna Sabalenka fix her serve problems. The formidable Sabalenka, in fact, was close to retiring before MacMillan overhauled her serve. But Gauff has yet to achieve success while working with MacMillan.

In one of her matches in Miami, Tennis Channel showed a graphic of Gauff’s serve toss. A journalist at the press conference after her fourth-round win compared her serve toss with Elena Rybakina, who is the best server on the tour if the stats are considered.

She is the best server on Tour, so I need to get to there! I saw the graphic, and it’s something I have been working on. I know my toss isn’t as consistent as I would like it to be, but when the pressure hits, sometimes you don’t care if they know where you are serving; you are just trying to get it in.

Rybakina has hit the most aces so far this year (over 150), while Gauff leads in the double fault record (over 120). Last year as well, the Kazakh ace finished in the top spot in the ace tally (516), while Gauff recorded 431 doubles faults, the most in the 2025 season.

It is definitely something I have been working on, but at the end of the day, it’s something I work on in practice and remember in the match, but also I try to do what feels most comfortable. But I would like to get to the point of somebody like Elena, where it’s pretty spot on every time. It’s definitely one of the things we are working on.

Coco Gauff added

Rybakina is bidding to win her second title of the season. She has already featured in two finals, winning the Australian Open by defeating Sabalenka and losing the Indian Wells to the Belarusian.

Coco Gauff’s team wanted her to skip the Miami Open

The Miami Open is one of Gauff’s bucket-list tournaments, and she has inched closer to fulfilling this wish. She defeated Cirstea 6-4, 3-6, 6-2 to reach the quarterfinals of her home tournament for the first time in her career.

Coco Gauff
Coco Gauff (Image via X/Game, Set & Talk)

Gauff’s team advised her to skip the Miami Open because of the ‘nerve-related’ issue that forced her to give the walkover to Alexandra Eala in the third round of the Indian Wells. The 21-year-old ignored them and chose to play, though she said in a press conference that she doesn’t have any expectations for the event.

Most of my team didn’t even want me to play this tournament, but I just kind of vetoed that. So I think I just went into it like every match as a positive, so I think that’s why today I didn’t. But also, I kind of wanted to prove them wrong. I really wanted — that’s what I was thinking about, honestly, when I went down in the break, I think, was just I didn’t want them to be like, Well, I told you. Yeah, so I feel like I have to win a few more matches to prove them wrong, but I am happy with how today went.

Gauff will next be locking horns with Belinda Bencic, who eliminated Amanda Anisimova. The two-time Grand Slam singles champion has yet to win a title since the 2025 Wuhan Open.

Also read: Elena Rybakina Opens Up on Rivarly with Aryna Sabalenka: “It has been close”