Coco Gauff Inherits the Earth
After winning her second major at Roland Garros, Coco Gauff stays grounded.
PARIS, France — Coco Gauff fell to the clay of Court Philippe Chatrier and stayed down, as if suddenly weighed down by the weight of becoming a champion after two hours and 38 minutes of a scrappy, windswept battle.
When she finally stood up, able to soak in her roller coaster 6-7(5), 6-2, 6-4 win over Aryna Sabalenka, Gauff walked over toward the box where her mother and father were waiting. Her time on the ground had left her with a small streak of red clay across her forehead, thus looking not unlike Baby Simba after being anointed by Rafiki at the start of The Lion King.
But Gauff, still somehow only 21, has already been the anointed heir apparent for nearly a decade now, in a sport that often doesn’t reward such dauphines.
And as Gauff looked to her parents in victory, so too should the sport as a whole.
I first met Gauff when she was 13, and had just played the final of the 2017 U.S. Open girls’ tournament, losing to an-also young 16-year-old Amanda Anisimova.
That moment, inevitably, meant rehashing the age eligibility rules the WTA made in the wake of Jennifer Capriati’s high profile burnout in the mid-1990s (a saga I might share some unpublished writing about during this upcoming gap between majors, if folks are interested), which would restrict how much Gauff could compete as a professional over the next years.
But the Gauff family insisted Coco was going to be OK.
“They put this thing in place for something in the past that didn’t go well,” Corey Gauff, Coco’s father, told me then. “That’s what the rule is for, and I don’t think that is this situation.”
But while every parent probably likes to say that their kid is an exception to the rule, Coco Gauff actually proved it.
Gauff won the second junior major final she played, at the 2018 French Open, less than a year later. That means that with her win on Saturday, Gauff becomes just the fourth player this century to have won the girls’ and the women’s title at the same major.
I next saw the Gauffs a little more than a year later, when Coco was given a wildcard into 2019 Wimbledon qualifying as a 15-year-old ranked 301st.
It was there that I first met Gauff’s mother, Candi, who like her husband was a collegiate athlete.
But though she had a sports background, Candi said that her “first priority is to make sure that I am the mom and that I’m raising a teenage daughter,” more than any emphasis on on-court results.
“There’s a lot of moods that a teenage female can go through,” Candi Gauff said. “We’re making sure we acknowledge her development, acknowledge her feelings, and make sure that anything that’s awkward that may be going on is communicated.”
Gauff became an overnight star a few days later when she defeated five-time champion Venus Williams in the first round of the Wimbledon main draw, one of the cleanest torch-passings the tennis draw gods have ever concocted.
When Gauff narrowly snuck into the qualifying draw of a WTA 250 event in Washington weeks later, thousands of people turned out to see her.
Her father, Corey, told me then that he was well aware there would be “many ups and downs along the road” for his daughter to weather.
“She’ll have great wins, and she’ll have devastating losses that she’ll recover from,” Corey Gauff said. “If she wants this to be her career, she can play 20 years — or she might just play 10 and decide she wants to do something else with her life. It’s perfectly up to her.”
The hype around Gauff was reaching preposterous levels—perhaps peaking with her third-round night match against top-ranked Naomi Osaka at the 2019 U.S. Open. But with her parents always by her side, she never seemed to burn under the limelight, and ultimately won her first major women’s singles title at the 2023 U.S. Open.
“I think sometimes we hear crazy stories about tennis parents and all that,” Coco Gauff said Saturday when I asked her about her parents, “and I can say I don't relate to that.”
Candi Gauff has become a more constant travel companion for Coco in recent years; Corey is still around sometimes, too, but he is no longer in any sort of coaching role as he was during our first meetings in 2017 and 2019.
In sharp contrast to other parents in tennis who over-insert themselves into their children’s careers—I don’t need to name examples here; tennis fans will know them—Gauff’s parents continued to put her needs and her wishes first.
“I asked my dad to take a step back, and he did, and it ended up being a great thing for both of us,” Coco said Saturday. “My mom, I've asked [to travel]—I needed her to be on the road more. Just to have, especially—well, I have my physio—but being on a team full of men, I was, like, ‘I need some estrogen and some female energy here,’ so I asked my mom to go. Women just notice more things.”
After quickly stopping to greet the omni-courtside Spike Lee, new champion Coco’s first hugs were for her parents.
“I would like to thank my parents,” Gauff said in her trophy speech. “You guys do a lot for me, from washing my clothes to keeping me grounded, and giving me the belief that I can do it. You probably believe in me more than I do myself, so I really appreciate and love you guys.”
Gauff recounted the moment later in her press conference.
“Yeah, hugging them at the end: my mom was pretty emotional; my dad was just happy,” she said. “My dad cried at U.S. Open; he didn't cry here. I didn't think they were going to cry, but yeah, honestly, it's just been so great to have them and be able for them to experience [this]. They put so much sacrifice into this, so I'm glad I get to experience it with them.”
As the Gauff family and team were celebrating in the players’ restaurant under Chatrier after Coco’s second major win, I asked Candi Gauff about her new role for her young adult daughter, which has now included joining her for things like escape rooms during this trip to Paris.1
“It's very important, because it's a lonely time out there on the tour—you know what I mean?” Candi Gauff told me. “So I'm there to be her support, to go out to dinner, to talk, to socialize, to do little things. Anybody on tour needs a person to go along with them just to be there, just to be that person.”
Before lauding her parents, Coco had also made reference in her trophy speech to having had “dark thoughts” after losing her first French Open final three years ago in a lopsided 6-1, 6-3 loss to Iga Swiatek.
Candi Gauff told me that learning to handle those bitterly disappointing moments—all the more acute because of how much had been expected of Gauff from the outside—has been key.
“Coco is a natural perfectionist,” Candi Gauff said of her daughter, “and what happens with perfectionists? They take losses very hard. And so she had to understand that it's just a loss, and that the sun is going to rise and set no matter what. So understand that, and don't put so much into whether or not you win or lose. Just know that you have another opportunity to fight.”
Coco Gauff took the opportunity on Saturday, but still flashed back to the 2022 scene as she held the trophy herself.
“That ceremony when Iga won, I just remembered trying to take it all in and pay attention to every detail and just feel like I wanted that experience for myself,” Gauff said Saturday. “I vividly remember watching her, pretty emotional, when the Polish anthem got played. I was, like, ‘Wow, this is such a cool moment.’ So when the [American] anthem got played today, I kind of had those reflections.
“Yeah, it was a tough time. I was doubting myself, wondering if I would ever be able to [overcome] it. Especially my mentality going into that match: I was crying before the match, and so nervous, and literally couldn't breathe and stuff. I was, like, ‘If I can't handle this, how am I going to handle it again?’
“Then obviously, [the win at the 2023] U.S, Open happened…and now I just felt really ready today. I was, like, ‘I'm just going to leave it all out there, and regardless of what happens, I can leave proud.’”
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We had a great time during the women’s final in the Bounces Subscriber Chat, so we will fire that up again for the men’s final on Sunday. Hope you can join in! -Ben
Coco did not speak highly of her mom’s escape room acumen: “I know when I invite my mom, she's not going to be great. She's just there for the vibes.”
yes, please, on the unpublished capriati thoughts.
It’s great to hear about a relationship between a tennis-playing kid and their parents that is not weird on some dimension or other. That line about asking her father to step back, how he did, and how it really was good for both of them was the most remarkable. How many of us can point to as graceful a distancing as that? Maybe her parents should be teaching seminars on the tour as there seems to be plenty of learning needed.