NEW YORK—The racquet demolition heard ’round the world may not be all that CoCo Vandeweghe will be remembered for at this year’s U.S. Open. Since that GIF-able moment in her 6-2, 6-1 second-round loss to Bethanie Mattek-Sands, the 45th-ranked American has reached the quarterfinals in doubles with partner Anna-Lena Groenefeld.
That said, it may take a photograph of Vandeweghe holding a championship trophy to replace the visual of her obliterating her poor frame into smithereens.
"I just chalk it up to having a really, really bad day on a really, really big occasion," Vandeweghe’s coach, Craig Kardon, said about the destructive sequence. "It’s not something that I endorse. She needed to do something to get rid of her anger, but that was the wrong way to do it."
Vandeweghe has since channeled her energy into an impressive doubles run. She and Groenefeld have beaten Grand Slam singles champions Sam Stosur and Svetlana Kuznetsova, the 10th-seeded team of Su-Wei Hsieh and Anastasia Rodionova, and two-time Grand Slam doubles champions Andrea Hlavackova and Lucie Hradecka, the No. 7 seeds. Vandeweghe and Gronefeld haven’t dropped a set yet in Flushing Meadows; next up for them is Caroline Garcia and Katarina Srebotnik.
"Ultimately playing more doubles will help your singles, so she’s buying into that," says Kardon, who has been trying to instill the doubles game into the 23-year-old since the two began working together at this year’s French Open.
After splitting with her previous coach, Maciej Synowka, Vandeweghe brought in Kardon at the suggestion of her agency, Lagardere Unlimited. Kardon jumped on a plane two days before her first match at Roland Garros. "I happened to be free. She needed a coach who could go now," Kardon says.
Vandweghe dropped her first-rounder in Paris, but the partnership with Kardon, who has previously worked with Martina Navratilova, Ana Ivanovic, Lindsay Davenport, and Mary Pierce, among others, appears to be bearing fruit.