Coco Gauff lost her WTA Finals title, ousted after losing against Jessica Pegula to start and then to Aryna Sabalenka. Here ends her very successful, yet tumultuous, season.

Gauff should be heading into this short offseason with the feeling of a job well done, and yet something might be nagging at her. After all, when you win a Grand Slam title and a WTA 1000, and make two WTA 1000 finals in a year, and won’t be ranked lower than No. 4 in the world, it has to be a fantastic year. It is. However, when Gauff lost that last group stage match in Riyadh, and also her chance to retain her crown here, it left a bad odor hovering over her 2025 season.

The disappointing result illustrates that Gauff’s high-level puzzle doesn’t seem any closer to being solved than it was last year. She hit 17 double faults against Pegula in her first match, despite having started to work with Gavin MacMillan this summer and the confidence boost of beating Pegula in the Wuhan final last month. “I just try to do what is comfortable in the match,” she explained in Riyadh. “But it’s difficult. Some things we practice get hard to translate into the match.”

Gauff reduced her double faults to just six against Sabalenka but admitted she had to take something off her serve to do so. “I would like to serve faster, but after my first match, I had to take some pace off and just focus on hitting it high, heavy kicks in the court. But I would like to mix in more flat and mix in more slider wides. Off the ground, for sure, are things that I feel like I can work on and get better at. But with the serve, if it was a good step, that type of serving is what I can do on an off day, but not how I would like to be on an A-plus day.” 

The serve has been Gauff’s nemesis for two years now, and it must be exhausting mentally for such an accomplished player. After all, that shot came to sink her entire game so many times this year, giving a feeling of a season of struggle, the nadir of which was during Sunshine Double. If you take her fantastic clay season out, the face of her year flips. On Thursday, against Sabalenka, we saw the best Gauff could be—and then everything that comes in the way. She was the best player for nearly the whole first set, up 5–3 after also having three double break points (Sabalenka hit three aces). Yet, facing her opponent’s power and pace, her momentum was slowly but surely erased. That revenge of the Roland-Garros final fell short because of how strong Sabalenka has gotten and how Gauff is still battling the same hurdles.

Gauff finished the year doing what she did better than almost anyone else on tour this year: showing that even without her A game, she could win big. After all, at 5–3 up against Sabalenka, she was nearly a set away from qualifying. “That’s been the story of my season and of the last couple of years. I played some really great matches, and in others I had to scrape through. My game is getting better, so I’m just hoping I can mesh it all together. It gives me a lot of hope for the future. It’s been a lot of ups and downs but overall a positive season with a lot to be proud of and many areas where I wish I could have done better. It’s part of life. Now I have a lot of time to work on my serve and hopefully be ready for Australia. I’m really excited just to get back and get better.”

The question at this level is always how the player can hold it together long enough to fix what needs fixing. At some point, it will become unbearable for Gauff to be undone every other week by either that serve or that forehand. She admitted this year that she had a clear image of what her game should look like and would refuse to play in a way she doesn’t like. Scraping her way through wins and hitting double-digit double faults isn’t the way she loves her tennis. “I feel like I’m a step in the right direction, and I just want everything to mesh at one point so I can feel completely comfortable on the court.” The world No. 3 should absolutely feel comfy out there, and it’s a red flag that she still does not. 

“Today I didn’t show up as I should have,” she said after the Pegula loss. But how many times this year did she leave the court with that feeling? 

Confidence that you can deliver in the big moments is everything for a top player. So this winter seems crucial for Coco Gauff—and MacMillan—to get her game together. The doubts and imbalance created by serve and forehand issues need to go now, as she’s still young enough and motivated enough to hit new heights. It’s time to take that burden off her game so she and we can all finally see who Gauff really is as a player. As Aryna Sabalenka joins Iga Swiatek on the list of players regularly blocking Gauff’s way to her dream of tennis world domination, they’re now joined by her compatriot Amanda Anisimova, who is threatening to take her spot as the U.S. No. 1. It’s been a great season for Gauff and, at the same time, one coming with a strong warning.