Opinion: Coco Gauff isn't jealous, just inspired, as two fellow teen sensations get closer to a Grand Slam
NEW YORK — On a breezy Wednesday afternoon at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, the tennis world was still abuzz over Canada’s Leylah Annie Fernandez and England’s Emma Raducanu, the teen sensations who each secured longshot appearances in the U.S. Open semifinals.
But just a few steps from Arthur Ashe Stadium, the original prodigy of this peer group was playing in a big match of her own, drawing a large crowd in Louis Armstrong Stadium to watch a women’s doubles quarterfinal with her longtime playing partner Caty McNally against the top-seeded team of Hsieh Su-wei and Elise Mertens.
Unlike Fernandez and Raducanu, whom most fans have only gotten to know over the last 10 days of this tournament, Gauff already feels like she has been around for awhile. Since capturing the public’s imagination two years ago with a run to the Wimbledon round of 16, Gauff has had far more on her plate than the typical young player trying to progress through the rankings. Not only has she been the centerpiece of a marketing campaign for her apparel sponsor, New Balance, but her presence at tournaments is so powerful that she’s almost always assigned to the big show courts — at times controversially when it comes at the expense of higher-ranked players.
At just 17, Gauff already is a huge star whose progress on the WTA Tour has been steady. What she isn’t — not yet, anyway — is a Grand Slam singles semifinalist. And she’ll now have to deal with the reality that in the race for major titles, she’s no longer the most precocious member of her generation.
“I definitely don’t measure myself by them. I never do that with anyone,” Gauff said after she and McNally notched an impressive 6-3, 7-6 win. “We’re all different and we’re all going to have our time to shine at some point, but it definitely is inspiring because we have all been close in level for a long time and I think it shows that for me, I feel like I can make it to the semis and finals because they’re doing it. Today we were practicing at the same time as Leylah, and I just felt like I need to work harder to get where she is.”
On the whole, there’s little doubt that Gauff — who is 16 months younger than Raducanu and 18 months younger than Fernandez — came into the U.S. Open comfortably ahead of them in overall achievements.
Not only has she already made the second week of a Grand Slam four times, including the quarterfinals at this year’s French Open, she has steadily improved her ranking this year from No. 48 in January to No. 23 now. Week after week, she’s been knocking heads with the best in the world, collecting wins over a slew of top-50 players like Maria Sakkari and Aryna Sabalenka, who have each made two Grand Slam semifinals this year including the U.S. Open.
But in a sport where greatness is increasingly measured by what happens in the majors — a trend that has accelerated over the last 20 years thanks to Roger Federer and Serena Williams making them such a huge focus of their schedules — another teenager winning a Grand Slam before Gauff would undoubtedly start to put the focus on when her breakthrough is coming.
Gauff doesn’t look at it that way, viewing what’s happened at this U.S. Open more as an overall generational shift instead of a competition among players she has known well since their junior days.
“I’m always going to root for my age group because we’re all kind of friends and we’re all rooting for each other,” she said. “Hopefully we’ll have a teenage champion in singles and doubles with us and show the world that Gen Z is coming and we’re coming strong.”
Being an individual sport where players tend to grow up playing against one another from the time they’re young until they mature as pros, tennis has often been a breeding ground of jealousy and clashing egos.
But the Gauff-led generation, at least so far, seems remarkably unspoiled, mature and gracious. As Raducanu has said after each of her matches, part of her success has been understanding that everyone is on their own trajectory.
“To compare yourself and your results against anyone is probably the thief of happiness,” said Raducanu, who just a few weeks ago was on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, having been passed by her peers in juniors.
And along the way, it would have been impossible for Raducanu and Fernandez not to look at Gauff as a leader for where they wanted to go.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Raducanu had posted some solid results at the high-level junior events — she even beat Fernandez at the Wimbledon juniors in 2018 — but nothing that would suggest she was a can’t-miss prospect.
Then in 2019, Raducanu started to make some progress at the ITF level but mostly at small money tournaments in out-of-the-way places like Turkey, Israel and India where she’d have never run across someone like Gauff, who already had notched her first WTA title that October in Linz, Austria.
Fernandez, who had also lost to Gauff in 2018 at the junior French Open, was on a bit of a different path. She started 2020 ranked No. 209 in the world, got through qualifying at a few WTA events and was on the verge of cracking the top-100 when the pandemic hit. Her results since then have been a bit up and down, but she hasn’t advanced deep enough in tournaments to have much match experience against top players. Prior to the U.S. Open, she only faced members of the current top 10 a handful of times.
That absence of experience and expectations may, in fact, be helping Raducanu and Fernandez as they advance in this tournament.
“What’s great with them is they have zero pressure, zero expectations, so they play 100 percent freely,” said Patrick Mouratoglou, who is best known for coaching Serena Williams but also is part of Gauff’s team and often sits in her player box during matches. “They are taking advantage of that, and it’s great because as soon as this tournament is over, it’s finished. It lasts a very short period of time and then you discover reality and the reality of the highest level is it’s an enormous amount of pressure and what makes the difference is often the ability to negotiate with that pressure.
“Coco is doing well with the pressure, but if she would play 100 percent freely maybe she would already win a Grand Slam. But she’s not and she can’t. It’s not possible. Nobody does that unless you’re young and no eyes are on you yet.”
Gauff, who lost in the second round here to the 2017 champion Sloane Stephens, acknowledged that getting tight during her singles matches is one of the issues she faces at times. Perhaps that isn’t a surprise when a 17-year-old who has never won a major title walks through Times Square, as Gauff did before the tournament, and sees herself all over the large video screens starring in New Balance ads.
“I need to do better and learn how to just not make so much of the moment,” she said. “It’s just a tennis match — you win or lose at the end of the day, and your life may change in some areas, but you’re still going to have your friends and family with you. It’s not going to be anything terrible that’s going to happen if you lose. Sometimes I put myself in the mindset that it’s going to be the end of the world and it definitely affects how I play.
“With Leylah and Emma, I definitely feel — I don’t know how they’re feeling on the court obviously — but from what it seems like on TV, they’re playing free and happy out there.”
Follow Paste BN Sports columnist Dan Wolken on Twitter @DanWolken