Nerves and pressure get to Coco Gauff at the US Open before she wins again

NEW YORK (AP) — This would not have been easy for anyone, and it was not easy for Coco Gauff. She is aware of the expectations of others. She has her own expectations, too, of course.

An exit in the second round of the U.S. Open on Thursday night simply would not do. And double-faulting her way to defeat might just be the worst possible scenario. So after she missed two consecutive serves to get broken and fall behind in the opening set against Donna Vekic in Arthur Ashe Stadium, Gauff felt overwhelmed and couldn't hide it.

The tears came. They wouldn't stop. She covered her face with a towel on the sideline. When she walked back out on court after the changeover, Gauff kept dabbing at her eyes between points, trying to focus, trying to figure out a way to win. After she did just that, straightening out her serving issues in the second set and eliminating Vekic 7-6 (5), 6-2, Gauff cried some more.

“I just show people what it’s like to be a human, and I have bad days, but I think it’s more about how you get up after those bad moments and how you show up after that,” said Gauff, who is seeded No. 3 at Flushing Meadows, where she won the first of her two Grand Slam titles in 2023. “I think today I showed that I can get up after feeling the worst I’ve ever felt on the court.”

Her serving woes resurface from time to time, including when 19 double-faults contributed to a loss that ended her title defense in New York a year ago. She leads the tour with more than 300 double-faults this season — 23 in one match not long ago — and hired biomechanics expert Gavin MacMillan, credited with rebuilding No. 1-ranked Aryna Sabalenka’s serve, shortly before this U.S. Open.

MacMillan altered the way Gauff hits serves, and she's been smacking so many in practice over the past week that her shoulder aches.

“The biggest challenge is just changing the motion and changing everything before such a big tournament for me," Gauff said. "This is one of the most nervous tournaments for me in general, and on top of all this, it’s a lot.”

In the first round, she needed three sets to get past Ajla Tomljanovic, in part because of double-faults.

But like in that match, Gauff’s defense and superiority at the baseline carried her past Vekic.

What left her as emotional as she was Thursday?

“It was just nerves and just pressure, honestly, and I’m someone that usually can thrive on that. There's been a lot on me this tournament, more than usual, which I expected coming in,” Gauff explained. “Basically, what you saw out there was what it was, and I was able to reset through it. But it was a challenging moment for me on the court. It's been a tough couple of weeks on and off the court, but I’m just happy to get through it today.”

Vekic, who beat Gauff at the Paris Olympics last year en route to the silver medal, took a medical timeout to have her right shoulder looked at late in the first set and was having plenty of serving woes of her own. She double-faulted 10 times.

In the first set, Gauff, a 21-year-old from Florida, had seven double-faults and lost four of her six service games, including to trail 5-4 — when the tears began — and then 6-5. But she broke right back each of those times and then was superior in the tiebreaker.

When Vekic sent a forehand long to end the set, Gauff's mother rose from her seat, one row behind MacMillan, and shouted, “Come on! Let's go!”

Gauff headed to the locker room to splash some water on her face and regain focus.

It worked wonders.

She gathered herself, and the second set went much more smoothly: just one double-fault, zero service breaks, in front of a crowd that included star gymnast Simone Biles.

By the end, Gauff was in a much better mood, yelling while shaking a closed left fist when the match was won.

She had noticed that Biles was on hand.

“She helped me pull it out. I was just thinking: If she could go on a 6-inch beam and do that, with all the pressures of the world, then I can hit the ball. ... It brought me a little bit of calm, just knowing her story, with all the things she went through mentally," Gauff said. “She’s an inspiration, surely.”

Gymnast Simone Biles, center, reacts after Coco Gauff, of the United States, mentioned her following Gauff's match against Donna Vekic, of Croatia, during the second round of the U.S. Open tennis championships, Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

Coco Gauff, of the United States, reacts to defeating Donna Vekic, of Croatia, during the second round of the U.S. Open tennis championships, Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

Coco Gauff, of the United States, appears to cry after winning the first set over Donna Vekic, of Croatia, during the second round of the U.S. Open tennis championships, Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

Donna Vekic, of Croatia, flips her racquet after losing a point to Coco Gauff, of the United States, during the second round of the U.S. Open tennis championships, Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

Coco Gauff, of the United States, serves to Donna Vekic, of Croatia, during the second round of the U.S. Open tennis championships, Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

Coco Gauff, of the United States, reacts to defeating Donna Vekic, of Croatia, during the second round of the U.S. Open tennis championships, Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

Coco Gauff, of the United States, cries after defeating Donna Vekic, of Croatia, during the second round of the U.S. Open tennis championships, Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian officials on Thursday said a Ukrainian drone strike killed 24 people and wounded at least 50 more as they celebrated the New Year in a Russian-occupied village in Ukraine’s Kherson region, as tensions between the two nations continue to spike despite diplomats hailing productive peace talks.

Three drones struck a cafe and hotel in the resort town of Khorly on the Black Sea coast, the region’s Moscow-installed leader, Vladimir Saldo, said in a statement on Telegram. He said that one of the drones carried an incendiary mixture, sparking a blaze.

Ukrainian officials did not immediately comment on the claim of a strike. The attack could not be independently verified by The Associated Press.

The attack was condemned by a number of Russian officials. Valentina Matviyenko, the chair of Russia’s upper house of parliament, the Federation Council, said that the strike “strengthened” Russia’s resolve to quickly achieve its goals in its almost four-year invasion of Ukraine.

The strike “once again demonstrates the validity of our initial demands,” Matviyenko said.

The statement follows claims from Moscow that Ukraine launched a long-range drone attack against one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s official residences in northwestern Russia on Tuesday. Kyiv has denounced the claims as a “lie.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry released a video on Wednesday of a downed drone it said was involved in the attack.

The nighttime clip showed a man in camouflage, a helmet and a Kevlar vest standing near a damaged drone lying in snow. The man, his face covered, talks about the drone. Neither the man nor the Defense Ministry provided any location or date.

The video and claims could not be independently verified.

Kyiv has called the allegations of an attack on Putin’s residence a ruse to derail ongoing peace negotiations, which have ramped up in recent weeks on both sides of the Atlantic.

In his New Year’s address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that a peace deal was "90% ready" but warned that the remaining 10%, believed to include key sticking points such as territory, would “determine the fate of peace, the fate of Ukraine and Europe, how people will live.”

Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said Wednesday that he, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner had a “productive call” with the national security advisers of Britain, France, Germany and Ukraine “to discuss advancing the next steps in the European peace process.”

“We focused on how to move the discussions forward in a practical way on behalf of (Trump’s) peace process, including strengthening security guarantees and developing effective deconfliction mechanisms to help end the war and ensure it does not restart,” Witkoff said in a post on X.

Lead Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov also reaffirmed that European and Ukrainian officials plan to meet Saturday, while Zelenskyy is due to hold talks next week with European leaders.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russia attacked the Odesa region overnight, targeting civilian infrastructure in several waves of drone attacks, according to regional head Oleh Kiper.

In a post on Telegram, Kiper said a two-story residential building was damaged and that a drone hit an apartment on the 17th floor of a high-rise building without detonating. There were no casualties reported.

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

This image made from undated video provided by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2025, shows a downed drone at an undisclosed location that it said was one of the Ukrainian drones involved in an alleged attack on a residence of President Vladimir Putin this week – a claim Kyiv has denied as a "lie". (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)

This image made from undated video provided by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2025, shows a downed drone at an undisclosed location that it said was one of the Ukrainian drones involved in an alleged attack on a residence of President Vladimir Putin this week – a claim Kyiv has denied as a "lie". (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)