Reuters
Tennis – Wimbledon – All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, London, Britain – July 1, 2021 Coco Gauff of the U.S. celebrates winning her second round match against Russia’s Elena Vesnina REUTERS/Paul Childs
Reuters
Tennis – Wimbledon – All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, London, Britain – July 1, 2021 Coco Gauff of the U.S. celebrates winning her second round match against Russia’s Elena Vesnina REUTERS/Paul Childs
Coco Gauff has already got off to a winning start to her clay court season. With a victory over her compatriot Sachia Vickery in the R16 of the Stuttgart Open, the 20-year-old will take on Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk in her next match. But wait, who’s that guy sitting in Coco Gauff’s box? And, where is Brad Gilbert? Well, here’s everything you need to know about the new addition to Coco Gauff’s team.
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Coco Gauff has re-hired her former coach, Jean-Christophe Faurel, who helped her get the breakthrough in the biggest stages of the game when she was only 15 years old. He’ll now work with Gauff’s team alongside Brad Gilbert to pull out the best equations for the 20-year-old tennis champ. According to L’Équipe, “Faurel responded positively to Coco Gauff’s request to join her staff alongside Brad Gilbert”.
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This former tennis player has worked with Coco Gauff previously from March 2019 to December 2020. During that period, then-15-year-old created a historic feat by defeating Venus Williams in straight sets at the 2019 Wimbledon. He was with her when she won her first WTA title at Linz the same year.
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Jean-Christophe Faurel was a professional tennis player, who had played on the tour for almost 9 years. His career-high singles ranking was World Number 140. Faurel’s most remarkable moment in his tennis career came in 2006 when he appeared in three Grand Slam tournaments. However, he reached the QF of the 1999 AO in the boy’s singles event as a junior player.
His best career result came against then-World Number 38, from Spain, Feliciano Lopez, where the former defeated the latter at the Open 13 in Marseille. Faurel, currently the coach of French tennis player Alexandre Muller, has also worked with Mirra Andreeva. But what made him join Coco Gauff’s team in 2019 and why did he leave a year later? Admiration for Coco Gauff’s potential. In February this year, he gave an interview to Olympics.com, in that interview he stated, “When I saw Coco Gauff at 10, I knew she was going to be an outstanding athlete.”
Gauff has had some extraordinary results when Faurel was with her in the past. But she had last won a title on the clay courts in 2021 at the Emilia Romagna Open. She reached the finals of the French Open in 2022, but she has failed to find her consistency on the dirt for a long time now. Can Faurel bring back the winning touch of Gauff on clay? She said, “It’s nice to have someone on my team that knows me since I was young and knows me well.” But what made them end their partnership in 2020 on good terms?
Coco Gauff reveals the real cause behind her split with Faurel in 2020
During an interview with the reporters in Stuttgart, Gauff revealed, “It actually wasn’t either of our choices to stop working together. He was having visa issues and couldn’t get into the U.S. for a long time, a couple of years.” She further added, “So once he got that all figured out and it became a perfect opportunity and the timing worked to be back together. I knew when we had stopped I always wanted to go back to him when all of that stuff got sorted.”
Gauff is looking for her first French Open title this year. But before that, she wants to end her trophy drought on clay. Will Brad Gilbert be back in her team any time soon? Well, the American tennis star assured her fans that BG will get back with the team at the Madrid Open. Can Coco Gauff finally end her poor run on the clay with a title triumph in Stuttgart?
Written by
Edited by
Deepanshi Bajaj