Circulating on Eleven years later, that same girl, turned into a mature, serene and eloquent teenager, was crowned the new queen of New York. “As you can see, I love being at Arthur Ashe, whether in the crowd or on the court,” Coco Gauff said with a smile.
The little girl in the video dreamed of being a Grand Slam champion, but that dream fluctuated as she grew up. “Today I would tell that girl: ‘Keep working hard and keep believing in that dream. Don’t let the skeptics diminish it.’”
At 19 years old, Gauff is almost a veteran of the circuit, in which she emerged in 2019 as the great promise of American tennis. That year she received an invitation to compete at Wimbledon, where she surprised by reaching the round of 16, and another to her first US Open, in which she lost in the third round to number one, Naomi Osaka, on Center Court. On that occasion, Gauff ended up crying, while the Japanese tennis player comforted her tenderly.
“It has been a long and difficult journey to this point. I had not fully developed as a player,” she recalled. “I think people were putting a lot of pressure on me. At 15 years old she felt that she had to win a Slam. There came a point, when she was 17, where they said: ‘She won’t win a Slam before Serena’s age.’ She felt that there was a time limit to earn certain titles and that if she won them past that limit, it would no longer be an achievement. It’s crazy everything I’ve heard people say about me, but I’m very happy with how I’ve handled it. I wish I could give this trophy to my past self, so he could see that all those tears were for this moment.”
From a young age, Gauff has had to learn to deal with the negativity of social media. “Today I feel very happy and a little bit of relief. Because this time I’m doing things for me and not for other people. There are people who prefer to close the comments and not look at them. I am very argumentative and very stubborn. Until ten minutes before the game, I was reading comments that said I wasn’t going to win today. “That turned me on.”
As seen at the trophy presentation, the Florida tennis player silenced those who did not believe in her with her victory. She no longer has to prove to anyone that she is capable of great triumphs: “The pressure has been taken off a bit, but I am still hungry for more. For now, I’m going to enjoy this and try not to look to the future.”
On Saturday there were also tears, this time of happiness. Gauff cried after congratulating Aryna Sabalenka and cried when she went up to hug her parents: “I had never seen my father cry. “I knew my mother would cry, whether she won or lost.” Her family plays a very important role in her life and keeps her grounded. “Today my father was wearing a t-shirt that said Imagine. He has taught me that what you imagine you can make come true. And my mother always reminds me that I am a person, and that tennis is what I do, not who I am. That has helped me today, because I realized that, whether I took the trophy home or not, I am still doing good things in this world off the track.”
As a climax to these two weeks, just as any other teenager would do, he will post his triumph on social networks. “I want to use the lyrics of a song for the caption on my Instagram: ‘The concrete jungle, where dreams are made.’ That lyric is true. It is in New York where dreams come true.”
