Mission failed! Defending champion, Coco Gauff ousted in her first match in Cincinnati. What’s going on with the 20-year-old American tennis star? First, fourth-round exit from Wimbledon, followed by yet another early exit from the Paris Olympics. Her fans expected her to make a strong comeback at the North American hard-court swing, but surprisingly she was defeated by Diana Shnaider in the R16 of the Canadian Open. Gauff is now literally shattered by her recent loss in Cincinnati. She’s perhaps in desperate need of some family support.

According to several reports, the tennis star said that she’ll “not participate in a press conference” following her three-set defeat to Yulia Putintseva at Cincinnati. However, there were a few of her post-match quotes which were recently seen floating on social media. One among them posted by renowned journalist, Ben Rothenberg revealed her plans before the US Open. Gauff apparently wants “to go home and try to reset.” Near about ten days are left before the ball starts rolling in New York.

Gauff doesn’t have much time. She needs to get back to her winning tracks as soon as possible. Her early exit from Cincinnati means she’ll be unable to defend her number 2 spot. She’ll now lose 890 of the 900 points she earned from this tournament last year. As a result, Gauff is most likely to be pushed to the number 3 spot.

The 20-year-old is now looking to re-set, re-adjust, re-start, and re-focus, but she is not the one to give up. What does resetting mean to her? Time and again, Gauff has spoken about the importance of her family members in her career. Perhaps this is the time when she needs their love and support the most. During an interview in June 2024, Gauff revealed how badly she misses her home when she’s on the Tour.

“There are times, yes, I do feel homesick,” Gauff admitted. However, she said that she’s very much thankful that her parents and her friends at times get the chance to travel with her. There will be enormous pressure on the 20-year-old yet again when she’ll step onto the court to defend her title at the US Open. She needs to figure out the solutions to her persistent problems very swiftly. To help her out more on this, recently another renowned journalist spoke about what’s really going wrong with Gauff in the last few tournaments.

Jon Wertheim points out the real cause of worry for Coco Gauff ahead of the US Open

Just before stepping onto the courts to play her first match in Cincinnati, we saw Gauff speaking about how she wants to handle the additional pressure that comes up automatically on her. She said, “I put a lot of pressure on myself, so I’m trying to take a step back and enjoy what I’ve done.” Is it really the burden of enormous mental pressure that is keeping the young star restricted from portraying her full potential on the Tour?

Cincinnati is a past thing now and the US Open is knocking at the doors! Highlighting the concerns for Gauff ahead of the US Open, another renowned journalist Jon Wertheim said, “I don’t know if it’s her game or just sort of her mental approach.”

Wertheim spoke about Gauff’s continuous disappointing results in the last four tournaments and told her, “Listen you’re not defending a US Open title, those points are gone. You’re trying to create, you’re trying to start something, you’re trying to start building.”

That last year, Gauff had so much momentum going into the US Open, and results were in front of us. This time, she has taken a different route! Wertheim is disappointed a bit, but he’s hopeful. “Fortune can change quickly in this sport. We’ve seen it with Coco, sort of good and bad. But yeah 16 of the last 18 points! That’s not how you want to go out before you go and defend the major.”

Even Gauff knows the trajectory of her career very well. She is used to facing successive disappointments and then coming up with astonishing results. But while she is capable enough to cope with the pressure, she is desperately in need of this break.