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The three Grand Slams this year to date have showcased the extremes of being a defending champion. Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek made use of their auras in Melbourne and Paris respectively to retain their titles, before Marketa Vondrousova suffered the fate every defending champion dreads.
The Czech lost in the first round of Wimbledon, and said afterward that the occasion had gotten to her.
“I was really nervous from the start. I couldn’t maybe shake it off.”
The pressure was too much.
Most defending major champions are familiar with this feeling, especially those who are doing so for the first time. Sabalenka became the first player since Victoria Azarenka in 2013 to successfully defend a Grand Slam at the first attempt when she won in Australia in January.
It’s no easy task, managing the increased level of expectation and trying to defend 2,000 ranking points having never done so before. Especially at your home slam, and especially when you’re not in great form.
Enter Coco Gauff, and her title defense at this year’s U.S. Open. The fourth Slam of the year is one of the most unpredictable tournaments, which hasn’t been defended on the women’s side since 2014. There have been nine different winners in the last 10 years. It hasn’t been defended on the men’s since 2008.
Gauff began her title defense on Monday, with a 6-2, 6-0 win over France’s Varvara Gracheva. She is looking to find her feet again after a challenging couple of months, suffering disappointing and emotionally charged defeats at Wimbledon and the Olympics, after losing to Iga Swiatek for the 11th time in 12 matches at the French Open. Last week, she lost her No. 2 ranking. Bigger tests await, but this was a reassuringly stress-free start.
Despite a rusty first few games, Coco Gauff eased through her first round in New York. (Al Bello / Getty Images)
Gauff is aware of the extra pressure that comes with being the defending champion, and has tried a few different coping strategies.
“I think if you look at it as defending, then it feels like you have more to lose than to win,” she told The Athletic at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
“I want to look at it as only things that I have to gain. And so I’m not looking at it as defending, I’m looking at it as more: This is a new season, a new opportunity to do well. I’ve already had a successful season, especially in the Grand Slams so far.
“I think I would love to win again, but I’m not gonna put the word pressure on my back. I think it’s unfair for myself.”
In her pre-tournament press conference on Friday, Gauff went further and said she’s trying to emphasize to herself the positives of being the defending champion. “My new motto is: ‘If you defend, that means you won something before,’” she said.
A day after Gauff had spoken, defending men’s singles champion Novak Djokovic walked into the interview room with the feel of someone who considers himself the man to beat — even though this is the first time in 14 years that he arrives in New York without a major title to his name.
Djokovic has successfully defended a major eight times in her career, and on TikTok, Gauff saw the way Djokovic appears to think about Grand Slam tournaments distilled in a comment she took to heart:
“Why stress yourself out over a victory lap?”
“I was, like, that’s actually a good perspective,” Gauff said.
“No one can take that from me, so why stress myself over something that I already have.”
Novak Djokovic enters the fray as a title favorite despite a sluggish 2024 — by his standards. (Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)
Gauff’s attempts to relieve the pressure are no surprise. Many former champions say they’ve found it debilitatingly difficult to defend what they already have, and at Wimbledon, Vondrousova looked inhibited throughout her first-round defeat to Jessica Bouzas Maneiro. She was returning from a hip injury, leaving her preparation for the title tilt less than ideal, and she was fearful too of being remembered for going out so early.
GO DEEPER
The Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova: Unseeded. Unsponsored. Undefeated.
The Czech then fought back tears in her post-match press conference, as she described how nervous she had been before and during the match.
Even more striking is the position from which Vondrousova won that title: unseeded, unfancied, and entirely unexpected to challenge. When even a player who won a Grand Slam as as an outside shot feels the pressure of defense so keenly, the magnitude of the task grows.
Marketa Vondrousova struggled to cope with expectations at Wimbledon in July. (Mike Egerton / PA Images via Getty Images)
Iga Swiatek, a five-time Grand Slam winner, said that at last year’s U.S. Open she was weighed down by the pressure of being the defending champion.
“I felt like I had a lot of baggage on my shoulders,” said Swiatek, who exited at the fourth-round stage.
“This year it’s a little bit different. This year I’m just trying to focus on what I should do tennis-wise to play the best game possible.”
Swiatek also struggled when defending the French Open for the first time, going out in the quarterfinals in 2021. But that has proven to be her only French Open defeat since 2019, with the Pole completing the coveted three-peat by beating Jasmine Paolini at Roland Garros in June.
Naomi Osaka, who has won four Grand Slams but never successfully defended one, said part of the fear she felt going into those defenses was the prospect of losing so many ranking points. Gauff could drop to No. 6 in the world with an early exit from Flushing Meadows.
“For me, I always found it a little difficult,” she said.
“I was so focused on the points dropping off and trying to do the best that I could to defend. I never really thought about it as a new tournament or a new opportunity.”
Making that thought reality is precisely what Gauff is trying to do.
It can be easier said than done, though.
Emma Raducanu, the 2021 US Open champion, lost in the first round the following year. “I was a lot more nervous and I think I felt the pressure more,” she said.
“It is natural. I still hadn’t come to terms with it.”
Emma Raducanu with the U.S. Open women’s singles trophy in 2021. (Kena Betancur / AFP via Getty Images)
Gauff, by contrast, was already the star of the tournament in New York in 2023, so this year’s attention won’t feel so intense. Daniil Medvedev, who has won 20 titles (including the 2021 U.S. Open) but has never defended one, said that he wished he felt worse than he does. “I think I should maybe feel more pressure. Normally, I don’t. But I never defended a title anywhere.”
He added with a smile: “Maybe I should feel scared.”
The most recent successful title defense came from Carlos Alcaraz, who in securing a second Wimbledon title also made it back-to-back Grand Slam wins.
“I try not to think that I’m the defending champion,” he said during the tournament. “I just go into every match thinking that I have chances to lose. Every match, it’s a war. The opponent, they are going to put their best tennis to beat you.”
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Surface mastery: How Alcaraz won Grand Slams on hard, grass and clay courts
Gauff, having evaded the indignity of a first-round defeat, is aiming to translate the aura she has built up in Arthur Ashe Stadium into a shield against her rivals. Per her new motto, if you defend, you’ve won something before.
Something that everybody else wants to take from you.
— The Athletic’s Matthew Futterman contributed to this report.
(Top photo of Coco Gauff: Robert Prange / Getty Images)
