Coco Gauff’s performance in her one-sided 2026 Australian Open defeat to Elina Svitolina has been described as “shocking” by former world No 4 Tim Henman.
The two-time Grand Slam champion suffered a crushing 1-6, 2-6 loss to 12th-ranked Svitolina in just 59 minutes in the quarter-finals of the Melbourne major.
Gauff had a nightmare day on serve as she held in just two of her eight service games, having won only 41% of her first serve points and a brutal 18% of points on her second serve. The 21-year-old American hit five double faults on the 11 points she played on her second serve.
The world No 3 was also badly out of sorts from the baseline as she hit just three winners and committed 21 groundstroke unforced errors.
Speaking on TNT Sports, Henman expressed concerns that Gauff’s display will “do damage mentally” and leave “scar tissue.”
“We all have bad days at the office, but I think in the context of being the favourite going into that match, she’s a Grand Slam champion, she’s won the French Open, she’s won the US Open, she’s three in the world… I mean, that was a shocking performance, there’s no two ways about it,” said the former British No 1.
“Svitolina just took advantage, but when you get the top player who can really only kick that first serve in, she was serving at a hundred and 25 kilometres an hour and then making so many mistakes from the back of the court, your assets of your game have just been completely stripped apart in front of our eyes, so that was that was pretty tough to watch.
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“That can sort of kickstart you into action, but I think she was just playing so badly and this is, this result hasn’t just sort of come overnight as it were; we know that she’s been struggling.
“There’s so much focus of attention and I think we all sympathise with Coco because she’s such a great competitor. She’s trying so hard to sort the forehand and the serve out.
“But to get through to the quarter-finals of a Grand Slam and have a match like this, I mean, that must do damage mentally. I think there has to be some scar tissue.
“You can’t just sort of say, ‘oh, we’ll forget about that and we move on.’ To think that she’s such a good player — she had three winners, 26 unforced errors in the match.
“And that’s that’s impossible to compete really at any level. So, yeah, it was hardly surprising to see her frustration at the end.”
Svitolina will face world No 1 Aryna Sabalenka in the Australian Open semi-finals.
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