How Coco Gauff’s serve let her down, and Emma Navarro’s calm served her well, at the US Open

NEW YORK—Service yips are the tattoos of tennis: Once you get them, they’re always with you. You can cover them up, do your best to hide them, ignore them and almost forget them for months or years at a time. But few players are able to erase them from their minds and motions entirely.

Coco Gauff discovered that sad fact again, much to her frustration and detriment, in her 6-3, 4-6, 6-3 loss to Emma Navarro at the US Open. Gauff has been undermined by double faults before, and she was again on Sunday. They started early—she had three in her opening service game—and increased late, as she committed 11 in the third set alone, for a total of 19. Any chance that the defending champion had of beating her countrywoman, and avenging her loss to her at Wimbledon, were washed away in the flood of wayward deliveries.

“Obviously I wish I could serve better,” Gauff said later. “I think if I would have did that, it would have been a different story for me in the match. I just didn’t take care of my serve, so that was the biggest difference.”

This was unfortunate for Gauff, obviously, but also for the contest itself. Otherwise it was a tense and fast-paced affair. Much of the time, the two Americans set up shop just behind the baseline and slugged their ground strokes straight down the center of the court at each other, like a pair of duelists with racquets in place of pistols. Over three sets, the rallies and the score see-sawed. There were stretches where Navarro, with her ultra-clean contact, had the upper hand, and stretches where Gauff, with her more explosive swings, turned the tables back around.

Judging from this match, though, and the one they played at Wimbledon, Navarro likes what Gauff’s game has to offer. She likes taking her pace and redirecting with superior angles and placement. She likes pressuring Gauff’s shaky second serve with her excellent, early backhand return. And she doesn’t mind sitting back and rallying with Gauff, because she’s just as steady, if not more so, and just as adept at defending. Navarro hit six more winners (20 to 14) and committed 25 fewer errors (35 to 60) than Gauff.

When Navarro broke for 4-3 in the second set, she looked destined to win in two. Instead, she got tight, began missing first serves and ground strokes, and double faulted to give the break back. Gauff was in the match for the first time, and by the time Navarro served at 0-1 in the third, the momentum, and the crowd, were firmly with Gauff. That’s when Navarro’s even-keel approach paid dividends. She calmed back down as quickly as she had tightened up, cut out the shanks, and held.

From there, Gauff’s serve collapsed. But Navarro still had to face another nerve-wracking service game at 4-3. This time she raised her level instead of dropping it. Down 0-15, the two played the rally of the match. Gauff seemed to have it won when she moved in and angled off a forehand volley. But Navarro tracked the ball down, sent up a perfect defensive lob that landed just inside the baseline, and won the point.

“Both of us faced our own struggles at times,” Navarro said. “I think it was a little bit of a battle of will there for a bit…Proud of just my effort today. I was able to stick in there through some tough moments. Wasn’t able to close out the second set, which was tough, but I was able to reset and come back out and meet a really similar moment in the third set a little bit better.”

There was a ton of energy and passion and emotion out there. Emma Navarro, who said she was pleasantly surprised that didn’t feel overwhelmed in her debut on Ashe

Gauff’s first Grand Slam title defense is over. She’ll be disappointed, obviously, but over the next week or so, will she also start to feel some relief, too?

In her press conferences at this event, she talked about how she was trying to find the right perspective on the tournament, and take as much pressure off herself as she could. But the fact that she was looking for ways to do that was a sign that she did feel an unusual amount of pressure in the first place. Watching her here, and seeing some of the strain she was under, reminded me of what a 20-year-old Pete Sampras said when his own first Slam title defense came to an end at the Open in 1991.

“Maybe things will calm down a little bit, you know; I’m not the reigning US Open champion anymore,” Sampras said, after losing to Jim Courier in the quarterfinals. “And you know, it’s kind of like the monkey is off my back a little bit.”

We’ll see if Gauff feels something similar, and learns from the experience. Sampras certainly did. To start, Gauff says, she wants to find a serving specialist who can help her with her mechanics on that shot, and make the yips go away—for a while anyway.

As for Navarro, her next challenge will be finding a way to follow-up her win over Gauff. At Wimbledon, she played poorly and lost to Jasmine Paolini. This time she’ll face Paula Badosa.

However that goes, Gauff-Navarro is a match-up to look forward to many more times. This summer they became friends at the Olympics, and rivals at the Grand Slams. U.S. tennis could do worse than to have them dueling from the baseline for the foreseeable future.