Gauff Blames Alcaraz for Her New Training Drill: 'Look What You Have Done'

Coco Gauff has found someone to blame for her training session, and she tagged him in it. The American posted Instagram Stories on October 27 showing herself grinding through unconventional drills, then pointed the finger at Carlos Alcaraz with the caption: “The type of stuff my coach make me do when I’m tryna be non chalant. @carlitosalcarazz look what you have done smh.” It was a joke, obviously, and it was also a window into how the sport’s best players actually prepare: by borrowing each other’s strangest ideas and then complaining about them in public.

What drills was Gauff doing?

Two kinds, according to the two accounts of the same Stories. Athlon Sports reports the headline drill: a specially modified tennis racquet with no strings and a large opening in the center, where the sweet spot would normally be. Only the outer hoop of the frame remains, and the setup has become known as the “ghost racket” method. EssentiallySports details the other half of the session: a shadow drill with poles set up on the court, one on each side of the baseline and a high one at the T, where Gauff had to strike a shadow forehand toward the right pole, recover to the center for a backhand, then finish with a jumping forehand to the high pole.

The second clip is the one that made the posts feel human rather than promotional. Gauff clipped a pole during the sequence, muttered an expletive, and carried on after her coach helped her back up, EssentiallySports reports, captioning it: “never back down never give up.” The ghost racket tests coordination. The pole drill tests footwork. The clipped pole tests whether you keep going, and Gauff did, which is the whole point of both exercises and probably the reason she posted them.

Why does Alcaraz get the blame?

Because the ghost racket is his idea, or at least his most visible one. Alcaraz has been seen practicing with the stringless frame while managing a right-wrist injury, Athlon Sports reports, and the exercise has been suggested as a way to practice elements of his game without repeatedly striking balls against a conventional string bed. EssentiallySports adds the backstory: Alcaraz was out of the clay and grass season after withdrawing from Barcelona in April due to wrist tenosynovitis, but made regular training videos before his return in August.

Gauff’s caption works because it is plausible. Coaches watch each other’s players, steal what looks useful, and inflict it on their own charges. Gauff’s coach in the clips is Jean-Christophe Faurel, who first worked with her in 2019 and rejoined in April 2024, EssentiallySports reports, and her team also includes biomechanics specialist Gavin MacMillan, who joined in August 2025 to work on her serve. A team like that does not adopt a drill by accident. Somebody saw Alcaraz training with a frame that has a hole in the middle and thought: that looks awful, let’s try it. Gauff’s post is the receipt.

What is the ghost racket actually for?

Hand-eye coordination, ball tracking and positioning, Athlon Sports reports. With the center of the frame missing, the player must pay close attention to the ball’s position and coordinate their movements through the stroke, because there is no string bed to forgive a mistimed swing. It is a constraint drill: remove the thing that makes the shot work, and the body has to learn the movement properly instead of relying on the equipment.

That logic connects to a season in which Gauff’s game has been examined from every angle. She has already been at the center of one officiating controversy this autumn, when she raised concerns about flickering advertising displays during her China Open match, and the tour’s oddities have ranged from a birthday cake aversion in Shanghai to a racket smashed into a cooler during a comeback. The ghost racket fits that pattern of tennis producing small, strange, very shareable moments, except this one is deliberate practice rather than a match incident.

Is this a real trend or a one-off joke?

Both, probably. Alcaraz’s training methods have already crossed over once this year: his whole team wore moustaches in Shanghai after a pact made in Tokyo, a team joke that became a visual signature for the week. The ghost racket is different because it has a coaching purpose behind the visual weirdness, which is why it can travel from one player’s rehab to another player’s pre-season. A stringless frame looks like a gimmick in a photo. In a practice session, it forces exactly the skills a player needs when the real racket is back in her hand.

The timing matters too. Gauff has been away from the tour for a month, EssentiallySports notes, and she is building toward the WTA Finals, where she will face the best players on the women’s tour, Athlon Sports reports. This is the part of the season when the work is unglamorous and mostly invisible, and posting it is a way of showing it without pretending it is fun. The crying-face emoji in the second caption does more work than any training montage: it says the drill is hard, she knows it is hard, and she is doing it anyway.

What is Alcaraz doing while Gauff blames him?

Winning, mostly. He defeated Karen Khachanov in straight sets at the Vienna Open, Athlon Sports reports, and will next face either Jurij Rodionov or Nikoloz Basilashvili in the round of 16. No reply from Alcaraz to Gauff’s tag has been reported, which leaves the joke hanging in the best possible way: one of the sport’s biggest stars, tagged by another, with the whole exchange sitting there for him to answer whenever he checks his phone. Tennis players borrowing each other’s drills is not new. Doing it in public, with the blame attached, is the part that travels, and it is why a practice session became a story.

What happens next?

The WTA Finals, for Gauff, and the rest of Vienna for Alcaraz. The question worth watching is not whether Alcaraz replies, though that would be entertaining. It is whether the ghost racket shows up in anyone else’s practice footage before the season ends. Training ideas spread through the tours the way tactics do: one player tries something odd, another player’s coach notices, and suddenly a stringless frame is not a curiosity but a drill. Gauff just gave it its biggest advertisement yet, and she did it by complaining about it, which is the most believable endorsement a drill can get. Hurkacz beating Djokovic for the first time in nine meetings showed how quickly a long-standing pattern can break; a practice trend can break just as fast, one Instagram Story at a time.