Coco Gauff looked as lonely as a player can, until 20,000 people—and Simone Biles—helped rescue her

NEW YORK—You won’t see many second-round post-match interviews as emotional as the one Coco Gauff gave after her 7-6 (5), 6-2 win over Donna Vekic at the US Open on Thursday.

Gauff got tearful thanking the Arthur Ashe Stadium crowd for pushing, urging, cheering her on through a match that was never easy, and looked at times to be doomed to end in disaster for her.

“It’s been a rough couple of weeks,” Gauff said, referring with her well-publicized struggles to fix her serve. “You guys bring me so much joy.”

“I’m doing this for myself, but I’m also doing this for you.”

Gauff’s gratitude was understandable. For much of the first set, she looked as if she were about to drown in front of 20,000 people.

After her previous match, she had seemed cautiously optimistic about her progress on her serve. Improving it was, according to her, just a matter of reps now. But that optimism quickly looked misplaced tonight.

She started double faulting right away, and was broken in the first game. Silence reigned in Ashe. A little later, after double faulting to go down 4-5, she looked up toward her team with a look of defeat. She spent the changeover with her face in her towel. Two games later, Gauff hit a second serve as hard as she could, missed it by three feet, and was broken again. This time she was shaking on the changeover. The silence was even deeper now.

“It’s an uncomfortable watch,” Mary Carillo said in the commentary booth.

But at that moment, hope arrived. It came in the form of a physio who walked on court to help Vekic with an arm issue. Up to that point, the Croatian had hardly played much better than Gauff. And her game would only go downhill from there.

In the first-set tiebreaker, Vekic made four errors, including one on set point. The crucial, match-changing moment came with Vekic serving at 4-5. She tried a drop shot, which is never a good idea against Gauff. Coco ran it down and closed the point with a forehand winner. She pumped her fist, the crowd roared back, and she seemed to loosen up and remember how good she really is at tennis.

“I was just trying to tell myself to breathe,” she said. “Just trying to put another ball in the court, and just trying to remind myself of the things I do well.”

“It’s kind of amazing I was able to get out of that one.”

Gauff went off court after the first set, splashed some water on her face, and said she felt better when she came back out. Her serve felt better, too, as the double faults decreased. She would finish with just eight, and make 69 percent of her first serves.

There was no second wind for Vekic, as the mistakes continued to flow. She finished with 12 winners and 36 errors, which was reminiscent of the 12 winners and 56 errors that Gauff’s first-round opponent, Ajla Tomljanovic, made.

Which brings up a point about Gauff: Even when she’s not playing well, she has a knack for making her opponents play badly—just ask Aryna Sabalenka. Gauff’s forehand is rightfully seen as her weaker ground stroke, but it does work well on defense. Vekic targeted that side for most of the night, but Gauff responded by rolling her forehand back crosscourt high and heavy, forcing Vekic to go for more—and ultimately miss.

Gauff said she was especially inspired by one fan in particular: Simone Biles. Gauff looked up and saw her being interviewed during the match.

“I was just thinking, ‘If she can go on a six-inch beam, and do that with all the pressure of the world, then I can hit a ball [in this court],” Gauff said.

“It brought me a little bit of calm.”

For a set, Gauff looked as lonely as any tennis player can, by herself in front of a sea of people, and unable to make her game work. In this case, though, the sea of people—and one very famous person in particular—came to her rescue.