Why Coco Gauff (at times) Hits Too Many Double Faults

coko go won her second round on Arthur Ash during a night session against a very tricky opponent Tatiana Maria 64 60 the score line looks solid however if you watch the match you know that Koko was making a lot of mistakes in that first set but it's fair to say that Tatiana Maria is a nightmare opponent slicing a lot of balls not giving a lot of pace and in a high pressure circumstance like that it is not surprising that a lot of players including Koko had a little bit of problems with Maria however when Koko won that first set she freed up her game played really well won that second set very convincingly six0 however during that first set Koko had troubles with her second serve she committed seven double faults and whether that's a bad Stat or not depends on the intention of the server so someone like Shera who often would hit two first serves making seven double Falls per set not a problem at all however Koko was not going for her second serve she was trying to make them kick them in in other words and she was still making a lot of mistakes so in that case seven double Falls per set is way too much Koko and her team understand that this is a problem and right after the match they went on the practice court and worked on the serve so in today's video I'm going to show you the problem that Koko has on her second serve and this might be something that you're suffering from as well so this video could be very helpful to you KOCO has one of the best serves in the world world and in my opinion she has the chance to break the record for the fastest serve of all time Koko is one of the few players in the top 10 who does not have a racket drop leak for you guys that don't know what a racket drop leak is I've made several videos on that subject and highly recommend that you check them out so coko unloads extremely well on her surve with good timing she has good fundamentals her toss arm technique is on Orthodox however there are other players with a bent arm when they toss the ball up such as carich and adal so this is difficult for a lot of recreational players but for someone that's been doing this type of toss from day one this is not that big of a problem a lot of people identify Coco's serve issues as a toss problem it is actually not a toss problem Coco has a good toss so for you to understand what I'm about to tell you we have to talk about surf fundamentals so when it comes to the first serve whether you're hitting it flat or slice you want to toss that ball well inside the Baseline and Koko does do that when it comes to the kick served you also want to toss the ball in front of the Baseline why because you're going to be leaning forward now you're not going to toss it as far possibly as your flat and your slider but still you want to make sure that your second serve toss is inside the court toss location is also important the toss on the kick serve has to be at least at 12:00 or even further to the left if we're talking about a right-handed player and coko does really well on on her toss she tosses the ball in the correct location however when it comes to the contact point on the flat the slice and the kick we're going to see some fundamental differences so on the flat and the slice serve the contact needs to be established in front of the head you can take a look at a picture right here one of the best servers on the WTA tour Linda nosova she makes contact in front of her head on her flat serve now when it comes to the kick serve we are not going to make contact in front of our head we're going to make contact right on top of our head and something else that we're not going to do is we're not going to rotate because we want to get an advantageous angle of the racket face at the moment of contact so the flatten the slly serve have torso rotation and a contact that's further in front the kick serve has a limited amount of torso rotation the body is more sideways at the moment of contact and therefore the contact is established more on top of the head now I told you that we're tossing the ball still inside the court so there's still a leaning portion even on the kicker players Lean Forward and because they're sideways naturally they end up making contact right on top of their head picture right here of Ben Shelton hitting a kick serve he is sideways at the moment of contact you can clearly see that the ball is being struck right on top of his head and he does throw the ball very far into the court on his flatten the slid and he still throws it inside the court even on his care so what is Koko's problem well it's actually very simple take another look at the Ben Shelton picture here and I'll take a look at a picture of coko kick surve and you can clearly see that the contact is being established way behind her head now the reason why you don't want to make contact way behind your head on your kick serve is that generally you have less power here so there's more of a chance for deceleration net errors on the serve and so on also generally you have less feel for the ball the further away from your head you strike it so the tricky part about correcting this issue is not to fix the toss because the issue lies in Koko's body movement so unfortunately Koko rotates on her kick serve just like she does on the flat and the SCE serve and because she's tossing the ball in front and rotating forward naturally that contact ends up behind her head so in addition to Koko rotating on her kick serve she also brings the upper body forward a little too soon in the motion and gets her body in front of the ball a little too much this is true for all surfs but a easy fix and a solution to your kick surf problems is that when it comes to the kick serve you have to stay more sideways again take a look at Ben Shelton one of the greatest servers in the world and I'm not singling him out to take a look at any kick serve you're going to see a position of the upper body at the moment of contact that's to the side you're going to see the tip of the shoes to the side the body has to stay sideways naturally when the ball is thrown in front of the court and the body slightly leaning forward contact is going to be established right on top of the head and from there we have better feel for the ball and more importantly we have more power and there are less chances of deceleration and making frustrating double faults now one thing that's super important and I do want you to understand this Koko is an amazing player she won the US Open last year one of the best players in the world currently the best American player period so you ask yourself Nick how in the world is it possible that someone that good can have a mistake when they're second served the way you want to look at it is the following first of all Coco has all the fundamentals that you need to have on the serve so that's number one she has one small technical element that's deficient on top of that coko has learned over the years to get a lot of serves in the wrong way basically so she's gotten really good hitting great second serve despite this technical deficiency this is not something that I see generally at the recreational level or at the junior level it is there where a mistake like this has far greater negative consequences and it is of the utmost importance to corrected however throughout Koko's career this second surf problem has shown up here and there and it would make a lot of sense even for somebody as great as Coco to continually try to optimize their surf technique