Tennis Briefing: Coco Gauff's top 50 problem, Masters madness, and sensational Shnaider (2024)

Welcome back to the Monday Tennis Briefing, where The Athleticwill explain the stories behind the stories from the past week on court.

This week, the Canadian leg of the U.S. Open prelude brought surprises galore, with the afterglow of the Paris 2024 Olympic tennis and some serious rain creating strange results. Elsewhere, Coco Gauff’s top-50 record came under scrutiny, Diana Shnaider continued her sensational run, and ranking point permutations had a moment in the spotlight.

If you’d like to follow our fantastic tennis coverage, click here.

What’s eating Coco Gauff?

World No 2 Gauff fell to the rising Russian Diana Shnaider in Toronto, losing 4-6, 1-6. Afterwards, she explained that she hadn’t been sure if playing the tournament was a good idea.

“I knew I was going to go into this tired,” the American said.

She also acknowledged that Shnaider — her ascendancy notwithstanding — hadn’t had to do all that much to beat her. “She just played steady,” admitted Gauff, who racked up 42 unforced errors in two sets.

Gauff looked similarly out of sorts in her Wimbledon defeat to compatriot Emma Navarro, openly feuding with coach Brad Gilbert while looking for solutions in that match, and was unable to shake off a confrontation with the chair umpire in her defeat to eventual silver medallist Donna Vekic at the Olympics.

Defeat to Shnaider means she has lost her last four matches against top-50 opponents, with a 16-13 record against that cohort in 2024 compared to 31-16 in the 52 weeks since last year’s Canadian swing. Against players outside the top 50, she is 24-0 for the year.

She will now be fighting for her No 2 ranking ahead of world No 3 Aryna Sabalenka in Cincinnati, defending 1000 ranking points after winning the tournament in 2023. Sabalenka, who reached the semifinals in 2023, is defending 390, with the gap between the two now 267 points.

With that No 2 spot comes guaranteed immunity from facing world No 1 Iga Swiatek, against whom she has a 1-11 head-to-head record, until the final of the U.S. Open, where 20-year-old Gauff is the defending champion.

Masters madness in Montreal and Toronto?

This was never going to be an ordinary hard-court swing, thanks to the 2024 Paris Olympics and its brief dalliance with clay courts. Throw in a whole day wiped out due to rain, consternation over tennis balls, and some injury concerns, and the Montreal and Toronto tournaments went somewhat haywire.

Andrey Rublev and Alexei Popyrin of Russia and Australia respectively have profited on the men’s side, with Rublev taking out world No 1 Jannik Sinner in three sets and Popyrin ending Washington champion Sebastian Korda’s superb hard-court run by beating him in the semifinals, hours after knocking out Poland’s Hubert Hurkacz.

Both Sinner and Korda looked physically hampered — the former due to a lack of preparation after illness, the latter having also played on the same day against Alexander Zverev — but Rublev and Popyrin were able to handle the scheduling. A whole day of rain on August 9 forced multiple players to play twice in a day, with smaller delays throughout the tournament causing havoc.

Rublev opened up on his struggles “with depression, with many things outside the court” on social media after the win, adding: “I guess it’s this year when I couldn’t handle it anymore and it starts to explode.”

“Now in the last months I feel really good, straightaway tennis is better,” he said.

Meanwhile, in Toronto, Amanda Anisimova put together a stunning run to the final and will move back inside the top 50 — at least — from world No 133 as a result. The American said she had found being at tournaments “unbearable” when announcing an indefinite mental health break from the sport in May 2023 and she will now play American No 2 and world No 6 Jessica Pegula for a debut 1000-level title.

How did Shnaider build her run to an Olympic silver medal and WTA 1000 semifinal?

Russian 20-year-old Diana Shnaider made her debut main draw appearance at a Grand Slam tournament in January 2023. She came through qualifying at the Australian Open before losing to Greece’s then-world No 9 Maria Sakkari 6-3, 5-7, 6-3. The two-set fall-off might be eye-catching, but perhaps that first-set victory was the real harbinger of what was to come from the powerful left-hander.

Her run to that tournament was anything but typical. Shnaider played a season of NCAA college tennis for North Carolina State, having already spent time on the professional tour, in order to guarantee her ability to play while sanctions were in place on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

This year, she has put together a more conventional but staggeringly steep route to success. She has broken into the top 30 by winning titles in Thailand, Germany, France, and Romania while putting together a serious list of wins — most remarkably beating Angelique Kerber, Paula Badosa, Emma Navarro, and Donna Vekic on the way to the Bad Homburg title on grass.

She fell to Pegula in Toronto but is now firmly in the top-10 players’ nightmare category for Grand Slams. Watch out at the U.S. Open.

What will injuries and form mean for the U.S. Open draws?

Novak Djokovic’s withdrawal from Cincinnati following his Olympic gold medal means he will drop 1000 ranking points by Monday, August 19, the week on which seedings for the US Open will be decided.

That will leave him on 7460, while No 3 Carlos Alcaraz will drop a maximum of 600 ranking points from 7950 to 7350 if he loses in the first round. Djokovic beat the Spaniard in the final of last year’s tournament.

Should Alcaraz reach the quarterfinals this time around, he will overtake Djokovic as world No 2, guaranteeing that he and world No 1 Jannik Sinner will be on opposite sides of the draw in New York City, while Djokovic could be placed in either the Spaniard or the Italian’s half.

In the women’s draw, the aforementioned tussle between Gauff and Sabalenka could have a similar effect, with the Belarusian, who has struggled for form and consistency after a recent shoulder injury, at risk of having to get through both the American and world No 1 Iga Swiatek to the win the title.

Recommended reading:

• Reliving Andrey Rublev’s rough patch earlier in the tennis season
• Stefanos Tsitsipas splits with coach and father Apostolos
• Coco Gauff and the unknown of being a teenage Grand Slam champion
• Diego Forlan: Manchester United and Uruguay legend turned ITF tennis player

📈📉 On the rise / Down the line

📈 Alexei Popyrin moves up 32 places from No 62 to No 30 after reaching the National Bank Open final in Montreal.
📈 Diana Shnaider ascends four spots from No 24 to No 20 after reaching the National Bank Open semifinals in Toronto. It is her highest career ranking to date.
📈 Amanda Anisimova rises 83 places from No 133 to No 49 after reaching the final in Toronto.

📉 Tommy Paul falls one place from No 12 to No 13, ceding the “American No 1” ranking back to Taylor Fritz.
📉 Danielle Collins drops two places from No 8 to No 10.
📉 Jiri Lehecka falls out of the top 30, going from No 29 to No 35.

📅 Coming up

🎾ATP

📍Cincinnati: Cincinnati Open (1000) featuring Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner, Tommy Paul, Lorenzo Musetti

📺 UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel 💻 Tennis TV

🎾 WTA

📍Cincinnati: Cincinnati Open (1000) featuring Iga Swiatek, Coco Gauff, Aryna Sabalenka, Elena Rybakina

📺 UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel

Tell us what you noticed this week in the comments below as the men’s and women’s tours continue.

(Photos: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)

James Hansen is a Senior Editor for The Athletic covering tennis. Prior to joining The Athletic in 2024, he spent just under five years as an editor at Vox Media in London. He attended Cambridge University, where he played college tennis (no relation to the American circuit), and is now a team captain at Ealing Tennis Club in west London. Follow James on Twitter @jameskhansen