Coco Gauff walked off Arthur Ashe Stadium on Thursday night with eyes still wet and a clenched fist raised high. The world No 3 had lived through another serving ordeal, this time against Donna Vekić, yet she emerged intact – emotionally frayed but victorious – with a 7-6 (5), 6-2 win that lifted her into the third round of the US Open.
The match was less a straight-line triumph than a public unravelling and recovery, a window into the psychological toll of remaking her most important shot in real time. Gauff’s seven double faults in the first set recalled the low points of her title defense last year, when 19 doomed her campaign. At 5-4 down, broken by two consecutive missed serves, she slumped into her chair shaking, buried her face in a towel and cried.
