Coco Gauff is in the Stuttgart Open quarterfinals, she is the defending French Open champion, she is ranked third in the world.
Gauff just beat Liudmila Samsonova 7-5, 6-1, and after all of that, when the interviewer asked her who she models her clay court game around, she said Rafa, and then immediately walked it back.
“The greatest clay court player is Rafa,” Gauff said in her on-court interview on April 16. “I don’t quite play like him but I do try to hit my forehand like he does on clay. I don’t run around as much because my forehand isn’t as good as Rafa.”
The interviewer suggested she was, at least, a right-handed version of Nadal. Gauff was having none of it.
“Like a Walmart version of Rafa. I don’t wanna be obliterated online. I’m like a lesser version than Rafa, okay?”
It is going viral, as these things do, because Gauff is genuinely funny and self-aware in front of a microphone in a way most professional athletes are not.
The comment also lands in a specific context that makes it more than just good content, it lands in the middle of a clay season that matters enormously for Gauff, in a tournament she has described as her least comfortable all year, against a backdrop in which her serve has been the one persistent question mark that has followed her through 2026.
Where Is Gauff In Her Season?
The 2026 tennis year did not begin well for Gauff by her own standards. She lost to Elina Svitolina in the Australian Open quarterfinals in January, which was a result, QF, that looked decent on paper but felt disappointing given her trajectory.
In Doha she lost in the second round to Elisabetta Cocciaretto. In Indian Wells she was forced to withdraw through injury before finishing her third-round match.
Then came Miami. She won four three-set matches just to reach the semifinals and then dismantled Karolina Muchová 6-1, 6-1 in the semi.
In the final she faced Aryna Sabalenka, world No. 1 and arguably the best player in the world in 2026, and pushed her to three sets before losing 6-2, 4-6, 6-3.
It was Gauff’s first Miami Open final. She went from struggling to reach the later rounds of any event to reaching the final of one of the biggest. Her world ranking is back up to No. 3.
Now she is on clay. And clay matters more to Gauff this year than it does to almost anyone else on tour, for a straightforward reason: she is defending more ranking points than any other player on the calendar.
She won the French Open in 2025. She reached the Madrid and Rome finals the same season. All of those points need to be defended this spring and summer or her ranking takes a hit. The pressure is structural, not imagined.
Her response to it, typically, has been to consciously redirect attention away from results. “My goals are just to focus on the game plan, more than on results,” she said ahead of Stuttgart.
“I’m not treating this as trying to win. It’s more about the process and doing well in the coming weeks.” She already knows where the real target is. Stuttgart is preparation for Roland Garros. Everything between now and late May is in service of what happens on the red clay in Paris.
The Questions About Her Serve
Gauff has been open throughout the early part of 2026 about the fact that her serve is a work in progress.
It was the element that former Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli highlighted after Miami as a “positive” she could carry into the clay season, which, read generously, means it looked better in the final than it has at points earlier in the year.
Read less generously, it means her serve was notable enough that a television analyst felt compelled to name it as an area of improvement.
Andrea Petkovic was more direct, saying on a podcast:
“I am taking away the serve, the serve arguably cost her the match in the final vs Aryna Sabalenka.”
That is a pointed assessment from someone who has practiced with Gauff on clay and knows what she looks like up close.
Against Samsonova on Thursday, Gauff posted seven aces, a healthy number and a sign that the serve is working when she finds her rhythm. She also started the match 3-0 down in the opening set, which suggests the rhythm was not immediate.
“I started off a little bit rough,” she acknowledged. The second set was a different story, 12 winners against seven unforced errors, taking the set 6-1, as she found the level that has made her the most dangerous clay court player in the world over the past year.
Stuttgart And Its Specific Difficulties
Gauff has been candid about why Stuttgart is the hardest event to play well at during the clay swing.
The Porsche Arena is an indoor clay facility, which makes it different from every other clay event on the calendar in a way that matters more than it might seem.
Outdoor clay has specific physical properties, the bounce, the slide, the friction, that players spend years learning to read. Stuttgart’s indoor clay is slippery in ways that outdoor clay is not, and the conditions, different light, different atmosphere, no wind, require a recalibration.
“The clay is unique here. It’s a little bit slippery, so it’s hard to adjust to,” Gauff explained at her Stuttgart media day. She continued:
“Obviously, the indoor component, something I’m not used to seeing till the end of the year. It’s different for sure. It’s definitely the least comfortable tournament I feel on court during the clay season. But I think it’s great to start with something more challenging — it makes the rest of the season feel a little bit easier.”
Her Stuttgart record reflects the difficulty. She has never reached a semifinal at the event.
In 2022 and 2023 she lost in the early rounds. In 2024 and 2025 she reached the quarterfinals and lost both times, both times to Jasmine Paolini.
Now she is in the quarterfinals for the third straight year, this time against Karolina Muchová.
The head-to-head with Muchová is 6-0. Gauff refused to treat it as meaningful. “It’s pro sports. Anybody can win on any day. Obviously you take what you did well in the last matches and try to do it again. Anything can happen. She’s a great player. She’s a great clay-court player too. I don’t take any of those matches into account.”
Muchová came into the quarterfinal after beating Elise Mertens 1-6, 6-3, 6-0, showing she can shift gears dramatically within a match.
What Else Has Gauff Been Talking About?
Stuttgart also produced a separate story from Gauff’s pre-tournament press conference, when she addressed the growing issue of fans filming players off-court.
Her comments were specific and personal, “Some people were zooming in on phones and reading text messages, that’s where it goes too far.”
She described being forced to ask cameras not to record her pre-match prayer. “I pray before every match, and I had to tell the cameras not to record that moment. There are many private moments that we have.”
The comments landed in a week when player privacy has been an active conversation across both tours, with multiple players raising similar concerns about the boundary between fan access and personal space.
Away from the serious, there was the Instagram post from the week after Miami. Gauff uploaded a photo of a clay court and captioned it, “in a throuple with hard court and clay court rn. idk who is going to treat me better this season ;).”
A fan on TikTok pushed back by asking for a Grand Slam. Gauff replied, “I’ll try my best lolll.”
And then there was Thursday night, in Stuttgart, after she beat Samsonova. When asked about Rafa, she named him as the greatest clay court player in history, said she tries to hit her forehand like him, acknowledged she does not run around her backhand as much as he did because her forehand is not as good, and then, when the interviewer floated the right-handed Rafa comparison, she shut it down immediately with the Walmart line.
She wanted the context on record so she would not, as she put it, be obliterated online.
The internet obliged by making the clip the most shared tennis moment of the week anyway. Sometimes the best way to go viral is to try very hard not to.
