One year ago, Coco Gauff departed the Cincinnati Open with her career at a crossroads. On serve, she had capitulated, offering up countless double faults in most matches, and she had lost confidence in her progress and game. She believed she had to make drastic changes to her team before it was too late.
It has taken an enormous amount of resilience, patience and toil, but this week Gauff began to feel the consequences of those efforts as she closed out one of the smoothest tournaments of her career with her best performance of the season, thoroughly outplaying the third seed Jessica Pegula to win 6-2, 6-4 and clinch the Cincinnati Open title for the second time in her career. This tournament marked Gauff’s fifth WTA 1000 semi-final of the season and her third final. Gauff has enjoyed a fairly consistent past five months on the tour but the 22-year-old had yet to finish any tournament this season without a defeat.
Victory in Cincinnati marks her first title of the season and fourth career WTA 1000 title. This win is particularly significant considering Gauff’s desperation a year ago. Gauff served 16 double faults and 62 unforced errors in her quarter-final loss to Jasmine Paolini at the Cincinnati Open in 2025.
After a summer of dire service issues, that defeat prompted Gauff to take the drastic decision of hiring Gavin MacMillan, the biomechanics expert, to completely reshape her serve. She began the transformation at the most difficult moment last year, the week before the US Open, and the challenge of making such a significant change on the eve of her most important tournament of the year was only exacerbated by the massive scrutiny that accompanied it. During her second round match against Donna Vekic at the US Open last year, Gauff cried on the court.
There have been so many more challenges, and double faults, over the past year but Gauff has finally found confidence with her serve and it has had a transformative effect on her game. You always want to feel like you’re getting better. So last year I was in a weird predicament, I made sudden decisions that most people probably wouldn’t do before a slam, but I think it’s worth it.
And obviously, I feel like it’s night and day, the player I am from last year to now.” After losing her first set of the tournament against Liudmila Samsonova, the fourth seeded Gauff rolled into the final having won the subsequent 10 sets during her time on the tour. Gauff has become well known for her tendency to fight through dramatic, tense three set tussles, so the ease with which she moved through the draw in Cincinnati was striking. Can’t say the same for New York.
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