Coco Gauff has never enjoyed the Qatar Open. He had played eight matches in Doha, winning four, before entering the 2026 edition.
Tuesday’s 6-4, 6-2 loss to Elisabetta Cocciaretto in her first match will still have hurt more than most, not because of the result, but because of the recurrence of problems with Gauff’s forehand that appear to define her next season if she cannot take the tournament time to fix them.
“I feel like some of the things I’ve been working on in practice don’t translate to the court, which is very frustrating,” Gauff said in a mixed zone after the game.
Cocciaretto, the world number 57 who can take the best off the court when she plays well, stood her ground under pressure and managed not to press too hard when Gauff was on top in the exchanges. But the story of the match was the forehand of the American world number 5, which sowed errors of all kinds everywhere. Some flew almost to the back wall. Some were thrown. Others were stabbed vertically. Worse for Gauff, the hard, slow courts weakened his defense mechanism: the slow, heavy forehand he plays against his opponent’s backhand in an attempt to defend him.
She used it to beat Karolína Muchová at the Australian Open. But in slower conditions in Doha, anything without enough depth was simply begging Cocciaretto to throw a backhand off the jump and smash it crosswise into the corner.
“I tried to be more aggressive and made more unforced errors,” Gauff said. “When I tried to be a little more passive and play with more shape, she would get the ball early and smash it.”
Only trailing 5-2 in the second set and facing imminent defeat, Gauff began to really flow around the court, pushing Cocciaretto back and attacking short balls that fell short of the court. But the Italian, who had never won a set against Gauff in three meetings, saved a break point with an inside-out backhand winner, a shot Gauff can use when her forehand isn’t firing, but one she couldn’t bring into play enough on Tuesday.
The loss will have little effect on Gauff’s ranking and, indeed, his season. But it shows that as her serve improves – still not as fast as she would like, but more steadily – the much more challenging task of reshaping her forehand becomes more important. Changing a serve is difficult, but it is also a closed skill that is almost completely controlled by the player.
A forehand is an open skill, subject to whatever variety of speeds, spins, court positions and contexts Gauff has to manage during a given match. Training requires more time than any player can provide in the off-season, but missing tournaments would mean losing ranking points and prize money and falling down the rankings, which would make the matches Gauff will have to play to regain his position more difficult early in tournaments.
Some matches will look like this. Others will resemble her Australian Open quarterfinal loss to Elina Svitolina, in which the Ukrainian forced Gauff off the court. And many more will resemble the matches he wins, when he pins his opponents down the line with his forehand, unloads when he hits crosscourt, and then uses his phenomenal backhand and unparalleled speed and athleticism to win points he should lose three times.
This was demonstrated even against Cocciaretto, who managed 11 break points but only converted three. But Gauff’s 39 unforced errors against 13 winners were too much to overcome (the WTA Tour does not break down error data by groundstroke) and in the longest rally of the match, it was Cocciaretto who prevailed.
WHAT A RALLY!!
Outstanding from Elisabetta Cocciaretto & @CocoGauff 😮💨#QatarTotalEnergiesOpen pic.twitter.com/RDuptd3sQh
— wta (@wta) February 10, 2026
Gauff, a two-time Grand Slam champion and mainstay of the top five at just 21 years old, has a lot of time left in her career and a lot of credit in the bank. That doesn’t make the decision he will soon have to make about his tournament fortunes and his future in tennis any less complicated.
