Coco Gauff ‘needs a weapon’ according to Mats Wilander, Tim Henman ‘sure she wins Grand Slams’

She described the defeat as “rough” and hopes Ostapenko can go all the way to the final.

“Is it because she’s young, is it because she wants it so much? I’m not sure,” Wilander said on Eurosport’s Australia Open coverage when asked about the emotions of Gauff.

“I like it in a way because it shows she cares… but I would be more concerned with her tennis than her emotional state, she needs to come up with a weapon against these girls that she can absolutely smack the ball.

“Her athleticism might not be enough and her forehand might have to be shortened down a little bit.”

Henman agreed with Wilander to an extent but saw her loss in a positive light for the future.

He said: “There are definitely areas she can improve on but I see that as a positive. Wow, you’re this good and you’re only 18, and you’ve still got so many areas to improve on.

“She’s been in a Slam final now, for sure she wins Slams in the future and yeah it’s hard to watch, you feel sorry for her, but it shows how much she cares and she’s going to want to get better in the future.”

Gauff burst onto the scene at Wimbledon 2019 when she had an amazing run to the fourth round as a 15-year-old, beating Venus Williams along the way.

In 2022, she reached the French Open final and carried that momentum for the rest of the season where she qualified for the WTA Finals.

Laura Robson is confident Gauff will bounce back strongly in the coming months ahead of Roland-Garros.

“You only need to look at how she finished last season,” said Robson. “Losing a bunch of matches in a row and how she came out in 2023, winning Auckland straight away.

“Ostapenko was leaning on that all day and she [Gauff] didn’t really have a plan in that situation. She was trying to kick the second serve but it was just sitting up and that’s when you see how young she is, even compared to an Ostapenko, who hasn’t been in a quarter-final for a while.”

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