Coco Gauff begins her French Open title defense on a tightrope between ambition and impulse. After incidents that spilled from her private frustration—like hitting herself with a racket at the Italian Open final—she says she’s leaning on therapy and journaling
Paris is supposed to be quiet before a first-round match. For Coco Gauff, it isn’t.
She has a French Open title to defend. and on Friday. she showed the way she’s been living for months: watch her eyes. watch her shoulders. watch her racket—because the emotion comes through her body long before it comes through her words. During the Italian Open final against Elina Svitolina two Sundays ago, she hit herself on the head with her racket. “It didn’t hurt,” Gauff said in a news conference Friday. “I had big braids.”.
On Friday’s schedule, the stakes were simpler on paper. Gauff will start her French Open title defense in the first round against Taylor Townsend. But the story around her is never only about the opponent. It’s about what happens inside the moments between points—what she does when she feels something slipping.
For nine months, Gauff has been trying to keep her game steady while her emotional weather refuses to stay predictable.
The pressure has followed her into every corner of the sport. After her quarterfinal loss to Svitolina at the Australian Open. cameras caught Gauff underneath the stadium smashing her racket to bits. She had thought she found a private spot. She hadn’t. The annoyance didn’t just stay on court; it pushed tennis tournaments to rethink the strategy for behind-the-scenes video that fans can’t seem to get enough of.
Gauff. meanwhile. has had to work on handling herself at the same time she’s remaking the shots that define her. She has referenced off-court difficulties that have made staying in the moment harder. She’s also been trying to maintain her place among the sport’s elite while remaking her serve and her forehand—changes that can nag at confidence and resolve even when the results eventually arrive.
They have been arriving, but not in the way perfectionists want.
Gauff is a two-time Grand Slam champion at 22. and her status has grown into the kind of spotlight where even the business side of the sport becomes part of the daily pressure. Sportico reports that Gauff was the highest-paid female athlete last year, earning $31 million in prize money and sponsorships.
Still, the strain shows up in the smallest gestures. She’s a perfectionist who isn’t truly satisfied unless she’s lifting trophies. Since January, she has made two WTA 1000 finals—losing both in three hard-fought sets. Between the big moments, there has been plenty of frustration. She will miss shots and raise her hand close to her face. shaking her head and talking to herself in the familiar “how-can-you-make-that-mistake” tone tennis players know all too well.
In Paris, she was direct about how she’s trying to interrupt the spiral.
“I have a therapist that I have been going to for a long time. and also. just journaling. ” Gauff said during a French Open news conference Friday. When she plays. she said. she wants to win “literally every point in the most perfect way.” That doesn’t happen—so her focus has to change shape. “I’m just trying now to focus on the process: The ups and downs of the journey of tennis. It’s something that I can hone in on and do well at times. and other times I cannot do so well.”.
It’s a familiar reality in tennis: anger and frustration are occupational hazards in a sport where players fight mostly on their own for hours on a big court. Failure is inevitable, even on a good day. For Gauff, the question isn’t whether emotion appears. The question is whether it takes the wheel.
Other champions describe the same battle—just with different tools.
Naomi Osaka, a four-time Grand Slam champion, said she once had a “pretty bad attitude” and her dad gave her a stern talk. “I actually curse a lot,” Osaka said. “I say it so softly you can’t hear it, and I’m really glad, because I don’t want to get fined for that.”
Some players. she added with her own examples. have learned to survive the outbursts and still win—using the eruption as a hinge moment that clears the brain. Novak Djokovic is named as a master of it. Aryna Sabalenka believed she had the same control—until opponents could sense something was breaking.
Sabalenka is the world No. 1. During a news conference Friday. she explained that late last year she realized she wasn’t in control the way she thought. “Opponents could sense that Sabalenka’s demeanor signified a collapse was underway.” Gauff was one of the players across the net in last year’s French Open final. When it ended and Gauff had lifted the trophy. Sabalenka blamed the conditions. her poor play. and Gauff’s fortune for the loss. She later apologized for not giving sufficient credit to Gauff. They have moved past it.
Now Sabalenka describes the emotion as something that used to destroy her game. “I think my emotions were destroying my game. and my level was dropping dramatically when I would just. like. start overreacting on everything. ” she said. “My opponents would see that and they would step in and play better.”.
There was still a way through, she said. Staying bottled up was impossible, but there was a middle ground. Her mindset and fitness guru, Jason Stacy, gave her a six-word mantra: “Don’t fight it. Don’t feed it.” She learned to breathe her way through anger, controlling her emotions by controlling her breath. She still loses, but only rarely does she “beat herself.”.
She described the goal as twofold: not letting an opponent see what’s happening in her head while performing better. “Making sure that my opponent doesn’t see what’s going on in my head. and at the same time. to perform better and to stay in the zone. ” Sabalenka said. “It was a huge improvement over the years in my career and really helped me to level up.”.
For Gauff, whether she can manage her emotions may determine how cleanly she turns this title defense into something bigger than another hard run.
She has been open about the process since early in her career. including a post in 2020 for Behind The Racquet in which she wrote that she nearly walked away from tennis before her breakthrough to the fourth round at Wimbledon in 2019 at age 15. “Going back to around 2017-18, I was struggling to figure out if this was really what I wanted. I always had the results, so that wasn’t the issue. I just found myself not enjoying what I loved,” she wrote.
She later described the kind of tension that shows up even when she’s winning. After an early three-set comeback win over Solana Sierra at the Italian Open. she said she wanted to be transparent without turning every private struggle into public content. “I am trying to be transparent but also not, like, give the whole world my business, too,” she said. The match showed joyless body language because she had lost touch with relaxation routines—going to her towel and breathing. or eating some fruit.
“I want to be transparent and vulnerable, I want people to know we show up when we’re not always 100 percent perfect. It’s a fine balance,” she said.
Then there were the moments where she almost looked like she was losing herself—and the adjustments she made after.
Two matches later, Gauff was locked in a quarterfinal duel with Mirra Andreeva. With Andreeva up a set, Gauff was teetering as the Russian teenager tried to seize a second-set lead. Gauff kept going through the match and through negative emotions. In the final set. she frittered away what was nearly a 5-1 lead. becoming too passive once the match looked closer to done than it should have been.
But when Andreeva saved a series of match points, something new happened. Gauff started pumping her fist after errors, reminding herself that she could lose points but still be playing great tennis against a terrific opponent.
Two matches later, in the final against Svitolina, the new habits showed up again. The smack on the head with the racket came after frustration boiled over. The frustrated toss after she lost the first set came after she had been on the verge of winning it. Those gestures didn’t disappear; they changed shape—less like a collapse and more like the messy work of trying to stay present.
That’s the line Gauff now seems to be aiming for in Paris: stay in the match, even when the match starts tugging at her.
After the tournament that just ended with the final, she looked back at the full range of what she felt—before she tries to use it as preparation for Roland Garros.
“This week, I experienced all the ups and downs of a tournament,” she said. “I’ve been down, had the lead, lost the lead, I’ve been in the final, been down match point. I think I’ve experienced every scenario. That can prepare me for Roland Garros. Hopefully, I can actually learn from each scenario and do better.”.
Next comes her first-round match at the French Open against Taylor Townsend. The challenge won’t just be what happens on the scoreboard. It will be what Gauff decides to do when the emotion rises—and whether she can keep it from turning into the kind of momentum that swings matches away.
Coco Gauff French Open Roland Garros Taylor Townsend Elina Svitolina Australian Open Italian Open emotions therapy journaling Naomi Osaka Aryna Sabalenka