Coco Gauff reached the final of the 2026 WTA 1000 tournament in Rome after defeating Romanian Cirstea in the quarterfinals, then used the spotlight to take aim at one of tennis’s oldest traditions: its scoring system.
After the match, Gauff said at a press conference that if she could change one thing about tennis, it would be the points. She said the familiar sequence of 15, 30 and then 40 does not make sense, adding that it is really hard to explain to people. She suggested the sport could move to 1-0-1, or something like that, or at least increase the points, and said the score should be 45, not 40.
The timing gave her comments extra weight. Gauff had been knocked out in Rome last year by Paolini, but in 2026 she returned to the Italian Open and made it all the way to the final, turning a tournament run into a public challenge to the standard tennis points format that has defined the game for generations.
Her critique was aimed squarely at the traditional structure of tennis scoring, the 15, 30, 40 system that players, fans and broadcasters have long accepted as part of the sport’s identity. Gauff’s remarks did not come as a dry rules debate. They came after a match she won, with her sitting at a press conference fresh off another major result, which made the complaint sound less like theory and more like a player talking about the game as it is actually lived.
The friction is obvious: tennis prizes tradition, but even one of its biggest young stars says the score is hard to explain and does not add up. Gauff did not stop at criticism; she offered a reset, even if only as a rough sketch. Whether anyone around the sport takes up the idea is another matter, but her comments ensured that tennis scores became part of the conversation in Rome for reasons beyond the result itself.
