Coco Gauff is yet to reach the business end at Wimbledon and former world No 1 Andy Roddick believes she will again come up short this year as he highlighted areas of her game that is not conducive to grass.
The American hasn’t made it past the fourth round at the All England Club with those runs coming on her debut in 2019 as well as in 2021 and 2024. Last year, she headed to SW19 high on confidence after winning the French Open, but was stunned in the first round by Dayana Yastremska.
The two-time Grand Slam winner’s preparation ahead of this year’s tournament did not go well either as she has played only one singles match and that was a round of 16 defeat to Paula Badosa at the Berlin Open a fortnight ago.
Seeded fifth at Wimbledon, Gauff will open her campaign against Tamara Korpatsch on Monday and she could face 11th seed Belinda Bencic – a semi-finalist last year – in the fourth round.
During his Wimbledon bracket picks, Roddick went for Benic, saying on the Served with Andy Roddick podcast: “Bottom section it looks like Benic and Gauff are the lead players here. I will take Bencic.”
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The three-time Grand Slam runner-up then went on to give a detailed explanation why Gauff struggles on grass.
“This surface is going to be a struggle and you are going to hear a lot about it,” he said. “The forehand grip is turned over, she kind of needs to get under the ball to create that spin mechanism, her movement isn’t as good on grass because she can’t screech and get back, it’s tougher to play defence on grass without a natural chip, it’s not like Roger [Federer] playing defence on grass.
“The forehand she has to flatten it out more and she doesn’t like flattening out that forehand… Her stock forehand is looped, so it’s going to go six feet above the net and bounce above someone’s shoulder, and then they try to play offence on that ball and it goes to her backhand and she screeches and she can get off the mark quick.
“Grass is a little more nuanced, you’re going to see people split, right, and they’re going to look like a baby giraffe in one direction or the other, you saw [Victoria] Mboko unfortunately became a victim of this and now can’t play Wimbledon.
“But you’re going to see it a lot, you have to run through the ball, the stops have to be a little gentler and then you’ve got to sprint out of those stops, it’s not the same as like a clay or a hard court.
“Coco’s movement is the best on earth and that movement isn’t as good on grass, because she can’t be as aggressive with her movement. She has to hit the shot and then she has to adjust the flight path on her forehand a lot.”
“I like Bencic through to the quarters against [Jessica] Pegula.”