2023-09-10 18:45:11
Coco Gauff has spilled her 19 years many tears that I shouldn’t have cried. The Florida girl who first picked up a racquet at age six, who was home-schooled by her mother Candi while her father Corey coached her, has cried under the pressure of not achieving what she wanted. the tennis world had been waiting for her for yearsespecially since in 2019 she became the youngest tennis player to qualify for Wimbledon and confirmed her potential by beating Venus Williams and advancing to the fourth round.
Gauff cried uncontrollably in that same 2019, at the tender age of 15, after losing in the third round of the United States Open against Naomi Osaka, crowned at age 20 the previous year at Flushing Meadows. Nobody like the Japanese understood the pressure to which Gauff was under and the toll that expectations take on the health mintl of the tennis players. And no one went out of her way with more class and style to ease her crying and his upset, publicly acknowledging not only Gauff but the phenomenal personal and professional work Candi and Corey were doing.
Comeback for glory
This Saturday, on that same Arthur Ashe track, Gauff was crying again, but with very different tears. In two hours and six minutes he had just come back from the final of the US Open against Aryna Sabalenka, champion in Australia and starting this Monday number one in the world.
Coco Gauff went from being a kid in the stands to a US Open champion.
Anything is possible. pic.twitter.com/1kce1ANO6E
— US Open Tennis (@usopen) September 9, 2023
With that 2-6, 6-3 and 6-2, which he managed to achieve even when he did not play his best tennis, Gauff conquered his first big, one that escaped her last year at Roland Garros against an overwhelming Iga Swiatek. And he made sure number 3 in the ranking and a three million dollar check equal to that of men, as it has been for 50 years in New York, something for which she was responsible for publicly thanking Billie Jean King.
Coco gave the shoutout to @BillieJeanKing for that equal prize money ???? pic.twitter.com/J0WA4b1lt5
— US Open Tennis (@usopen) September 9, 2023
End of doubts
Gauff, in which Roger Federer already identified the talent years ago, putting her under the representation of his agency Team8also forcefully silenced those who have doubted her, those who said that it was another inflated phenomenon, those who continued to minimize her power as this summer, she restarted her physical and mental work with the Catalan Pere Riba and with Brad Gilbert After an early exit from Wimbledon, he was climbing the ranks. “Thanks to the people who didn’t believe in me,” she said on Saturday, already a brand new champion, at the ceremony. And she reviewed the questions those voices continued to raise as she added up the titles in Washington (WTA500) and in Cincinnati (WTA1000). “TO those who thought they were pouring water on my fire: you were really pouring gasoline“, he said, “and now I’m burning dazzlingly.”
His words could not be read as arrogance. It was just the reaffirmation of faith in herself of a tennis player who has finally been able to make her dream come true when, with the help of her new team, and especially her parents, she has finished freeing yourself from chains, foreign and own. And today it is true that Gauff dazzles, on and off the track.
Inspired by Alcaraz
In the matches we have seen his sports evolutionthe improvement of a athleticism that helps you cover the track like no other today and with which it makes up for some of its weakest points (although also improved), such as the right. There and in his interviews and press conferences he has made it possible to understand that things have started to go better when, inspired as he has recognized in Carlos Alcaraz and following the first advice that Gilbert gave him, has decided to “smile more“, to enjoy. And in his press conference after the victory, he explained his own evolution with the clarity, eloquence and maturity that characterize his speech.
“My mother always reminds me that I am human, that tennis is what I do but it is not who I am”, he explained. “In the past I labeled myself as a player and felt that if I didn’t do well in tennis it meant I wasn’t good as a person. It has taken a lot growth to realize the opposite and it has not been easy. I used to compare my tennis to my value. If I lost, I thought I was worthless as a person. And it has helped me to have my parents reminding me that they love me no matter my results.”
childhood dreams
That journey has been, as I also recognized, long. At 15 years old she already felt the pressure that he had to be big for that age. At 17 he was told and told himself that he had to beat the precocity marks of Serena Williams, with her sister Venus her greatest idol and the legend of women’s tennis who was practically imposed on her to succeed. “I felt like I had time limits, and that if I didn’t win by a certain age it wouldn’t be an achievement,” he acknowledged on Saturday. Now, however, it works with a different mentality: do it for herself, “not for other people”. And “go out there and try the best you can.”
The strategy has paid off. And the eight-year-old girl who danced in the Arthur Ashe stands on one of the days dedicated to children at the Open (as an old video that has now gone viral recalls), is 11 later the queen of the tournament. When asked what she would say to that little girl, Gauff replied: “As a girl you have dreams and as you grow sometimes can be diluted. She would tell him not to lose his dream of him and keep working hard and believing in him and that Don’t let those who doubt you take away your hope.”
Ready and hungry for more
Gauff, avid consumer and participant of the social networksis also aware of the place where not only tennis but American society and culture, they put it now. He praises Althea Gibson, las Williams, Sloane Stephens y Osaka, the other black champions who “they opened the way”and now wait continue the legacy“that another girl can see this trophy and think she can add her name too.”
For what is coming now, especially for a tennis player who has already transcended the sport and has raised his voice in causes of social and racial justice, and that in this same Open he showed his understanding towards the environmental activists who interrupted his semifinal to protest the climate changedeclared “list”. He is also in the professional field, where his words remain as a warning: he has “hunger for more.”
Gauff is also very clear that sport is not everything. And also a few days ago she had left another sample that mental clarity that defines him at 19 years old. “There are people who have a hard time feeding their families, people who don’t know where their next meal is coming from, people who have to pay the bills,” she said. “That’s real pressure, that’s difficulties, that’s real life. I I am in a very privileged position. I am paid to do what I love and supported to do what I love. And that’s something I don’t take for granted.”
#Open #Coco #Gauff #Tennis