The WTA already has its new Serena Williams: Coco Gauff, the 19-year-old who wanted to follow in the footsteps of her idols

Tennis player Coco Gauff during the Australian Open (REUTERS / Tracey Nearmy)

Approximately a year and a half ago, one of the best tennis players in history said goodbye to the courts and hung up her racket: Serena Williams. From that moment on, the WTA circuit has had a void that is difficult to fill. The emergence of a tennis player with Williams’ characteristics was expected to be complicated, given the record she has retired with: 39 Grand Slam titles (23 individually and 14 in doubles). However, there is one player who has aroused the same feeling that Serena aroused every time she came into action. Coco Gauff is the star that many point to as Williams’ successor.

At only 19 years old, he is ranked number four, although it is expected that it will not take long for him to reach the crown and be at the top of the ranking. In September of last year, he managed to lift his first Grand Slam at the US Open. And the truth is that she is the youngest tennis player to achieve it since Williams did it in 2001. Although both share much more than that, because looking at Gauff and not remembering Williams is almost impossible. There is much evidence that shows the similarities between the legend and the emerging pearl.

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“The Williams sisters inspired me to play tennis because I saw someone like me playing a sport where there weren’t many people who looked like me,” Gauff said during the New York tournament. The truth is that the 19-year-old girl has been following her sisters since she was little and she was beginning to take her first rackets. She just turned on the television to watch Serena or Venus play. So it was evident that her game, way of moving, style and potential would be similar to her idols.

At just 10 years old, Patrick Mouratoglou, Serena’s coach, offered her a scholarship to join his academy in Nice, which is one of the best in the world. Just three seasons later, Gauff reached the junior final of the US Open and the following year, at the age of 14, she won the junior tournament at Roland Garros. The potential of the American was beginning to dazzle the world. And in 2019 she debuted as a professional on the WTA circuit at the Indian Wells tournament and a few weeks later she was already lifting her first cup in Miami.

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That same year, he received an invitation to participate in Wimbledon that he could not refuse. As fate would have it, she had to face Venus Williams, at that time she was only 15 years old and she was ranked 313th in the ranking, but she had fulfilled a dream. However, if she wanted to go as far as the sisters, a lot of work was necessary on a physical and mental level, especially to face the Grand Slams: “They are so intense that you always want to win and now I have learned to deal with that. I think that’s an important part of life and learning and the more I’m in that position, the more I learn how to handle pressure.”

As in the case of the Williams sisters, the role of Coco Gauff’s father, Corey Gauff, was fundamental for the tennis player to get to where she is today. With less severity than Richard Williams applied, Corey trained his daughter to excel in the sport. First they tried their hand at basketball, gymnastics or athletics. However, Coco was destined to wield a racket. Thus, the American’s father drew up a 10-year plan to reach the young Coco at most. A plan that ended up working.

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