No. 1 seed Coco Gauff was defeated by No. 14 seed Diana Shnaider in the third round of the National Bank Open in Toronto. Gauff lost 6-4, 6-1 to the Russian, marking the first time that she has lost to a player younger than her. At 20 years old, Shnaider is less than a month younger than Gauff but you don’t see many younger players than Coco in notable matches. Gauff was 7-0 in matches against players younger than her before this loss.
Shnaider’s consistency took her far in this match. The wind wreaked havoc on this match. Gauff committed 42 unforced errors in this 70-minute match, nearly double the amount Shnaider had. The Russian waited for her opponent to make mistakes and that worked wonderfully. Shnaider broke Gauff’s serve three times in the match on her way to her first Masters 1000 quarterfinal in her young career.
Match Recap
https://gty.im/2165584261
In addition to being the more consistent player, Shnaider hit the ball deep to make Gauff uncomfortable. The 20-year-old Russian also dominated serving, winning 81% of her first serve points, as well as an impressive 61% of points won on her second serve.
For Gauff, she had a tough time serving, committing eight double faults in the match. Shnaider served half as many. While the top-ranked American won the same percentage of points on her second serve as Shnaider, she only won 65% of points on her first serve.
With this win, Diana Shnaider gets her first top 10 victory in her career, and what a big one it was. Her other recent notable wins include beating 19th-ranked Emma Navarro 7-5, 2-6, 6-3 in the Bad Homburg Open semifinal in Germany. Shnaider’s only other notable result has been beating Sloane Stephens in the second round of Wimbledon. She lost to Emma Navarro in the next round in three sets. Unless you call winning the Thailand Open against 45th-ranked Lin Zhu 6-3, 2-6, 6-1 notable, Shnaider has not had much else going on in her pro career so far. Maybe this will be the start of a great career, but knowing the nature of women’s tennis, she will likely be a flash in the pan.
A Skewed Match Highlights Video
While watching the match highlights video, I noticed that a majority of the clips showed points that Gauff won. For example, the video would show her smashing an overhead or crushing a forehand winner and then cutting to the next highlight with her losing that game. Now, I understand that she is one of the biggest stars in women’s tennis right now and it is amazing that she has had a lot of success at such a young age. I know that is something that the WTA wants to market and focus on.
But for just a match highlights video, does it make sense to show more clips of Gauff winning points than Shnaider, the woman who actually won the match? No of course not. Regardless of how big of a star they are, if they lose that match, make sure that is reflected in the highlights video. If the WTA shows Gauff winning points in most clips and in reality, she lost by a big margin, that skews heavily in her favor. Watching all these points of Gauff winning isn’t going to make much sense for people watching the video. The WTA was cherry-picking heavily in this video and it looked bad.
Coco Gauff’s Tough Last Two Weeks
It has not been the best two weeks for the defending US Open Champion. In addition to this early exit at the National Bank Open, Gauff’s match against Croatian Donna Vekic at the Olympics on July 30th was embroiled in controversy. There was a questionable line call over a shot that Vekic hit. The ball was originally called out but was then called in after further review. Coco was very upset about that and said that she felt that she continued to be cheated on calls. Nevertheless, the rest of the match didn’t go well for her and she lost in straight sets.
Fast forward to Saturday, August 10th, and the No.2 player in the world struggled again and suffered an early exit in Toronto against a relatively unknown player. It is always tough to lose matches against much lower-ranked players. It is bad for morale and the American has had two such losses in the last two weeks. She will have to make some adjustments and lock in for the US Open if she wants to defend her title. I’m confident she will be able to make a deep run in the last major of the year, but she will have to play her best and cut down on the unforced errors. We’ll see if she has made any adjustments when the US Open starts in 16 days.
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