USA announces Billie Jean King Cup team without Coco Gauff after Indian Wells exit
After Swiss wildcard Belinda Bencic pulled off a shock win over Coco Gauff at Indian Wells, the USA's Billie Jean King Cup team has now been announced.
American superstar Coco Gauff will be absent from the USA's Billie Jean King Cup team for April's qualifiers in Slovakia in the wake of her Indian Wells exit. The current world No. 3 fell to a shock defeat at the hands of Swiss ace Belinda Bencic in the Round of 16 at the BNP Paribas Open.
The wild-card entry pulled off a surprise 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 victory against the one-time U.S. Open victor in Califoria to book her quarter-finals place. After losing the first set, the former Olympic gold medalist showed her resilience as she eventually seized a memorable triumph over the homegrown talent over the course of 2 hours and 20 minutes.
As Gauff dusts herself down from a wounding loss on home turf, it has also been confirmed that she will not be taking part in the 2025 Billie Jean King Cup qualifying in Bratislava between April 11-13. Instead USA captain Lindsay Davenport has announced that Jessica Pegula, Danielle Collins, McCartney Kessler, Asia Muhammad and Desirae Krawczyk will take on Denmark and hosts Slovakia in Group C.
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With her form having come under scrutiny in recent times, Gauff has insisted that she has no concerns over her performances on court. Speaking after crashing out at Indian Wells, she said: "Overall I feel like, I mean, it’s not as bad as it seems.
"I lost 6-4 in the third in the fourth round against a tough opponent who’s coming off a 500 win. Obviously I wanted to do better, want to have better results, but it’s not something I can crush myself on. I’m trying to do better, and that’s all I can do. I’m trying to work on things in practice, and unfortunately right now it's not translating how I’d like to."
"I think sometimes in sports you want to just stay on the high and kind of ride that wave, but especially with this sport, a season as long as tennis, it’s kind of impossible to always be on that high wave, and there’s going to be some low moments I think. Just trying to stick through those tough moments and get better through them.
After encountering issues with her second serve in recent times, the youngster confirmed she working on tweaking her game. She continued: "I think it's all connected. We kind of changed a lot of things with the serve. I don't want to get into specifics of it, but yeah, I mean, I went on the practice court after the first day and then after the other day.
“You know, I still think I could have served better. Was obviously more consistent, but definitely want to get more aggressive with it. It was kind of one of those things where I started the tournament not serving well, so it's more so just trying to get it in.
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"I hit some good serves today, but I feel like especially in that last game, up 40-0, I probably could have went bigger in those moments. But yeah, it is an improvement, and hopefully can continue to do better from here."
Meanwhile, Bencic said after the events at the BNP Paribas Open: "I felt like she was more tense, so I felt like that was the right time to go for her forehand,” the world No. 58 said. Obviously, like, it's difficult to all the time go at one side, because I feel like if someone is not so confident on one side, the worse you can do is give them rhythm."
