Coco Gauff, an incredible 18 year old
It is easy to forget how old Coco Gauff is at times. She made her mark on tennis 3 years ago by beating Venus Williams on the Centre Court of Wimbledon as a 15 year old. She is now no.11 in the world, 4th in the race to the WTA Finals and world no.6 in doubles. She reached her first grand slam final at Roland Garros this year. She is 18 years old.
Her tennis is already amazing to watch and appreciate. Her movement is unrivalled. I would argue it is the best on the WTA tour. She has an amazing first serve that can often get her out of trouble and be a great weapon. She has great variety, tactical awareness and point construction. She is 18 years old.
Gauff has won both her matches so far in Toronto in deciding set tiebreaks. Round 2 against the Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina who saved 4 match points in the second set. Round 3 against world no.6 Aryna Sabalenka who managed to recover from a double break. She is back in the quarter-finals of the Canadian Open for a second year running and is very close to making her top 10 debut. She is 18 years old.
Gauff making her first slam final
With the kind of stunning debut and announcement onto the world stage Coco Gauff gave at Wimbledon 2019 reaching the 4th round the US Open where she reached the 3rd round, we can be harsh on her. To do that at 15, people can expect the development to be exponential growth. By now, you might have expected her to make the top 10, to win a slam or a WTA1000, and criticise her for stagnating. But, she is 18 years old. We cannot and should not put such expectations on someone so young.
Development in any sport is not linear progression. Some players develop slowly, coming through youth ranks and building up at senior level at a gradual pace. Some race through to senior debuts before beginning to struggle. Some win grand slams at 18 years old or score hatricks on their debuts in the Champions League. Emma Raducanu won a grand slam at 18 as a qualifier and is now struggling to adjust to tour life. Iga Swiatek was comfortably at world no.8 and then went on a 37 match winning streak. No two sportspeople get to the top in the same way, and that's ok.
Gauff might not have won a grand slam at 18 or be top 10, but she is still a remarkable player. Her rise in the years since that Wimbledon run might not have been meteoric, but it has been steady. I think we are always more excited about those breakout youngsters, seeing how electric they are and how good they are at such young ages. We get to dream wildly about the things they will do, how many grand slams they will win. And then, when the rough patches come as they always will, we dump them. Suddenly it's panic stations; why aren't they as scarily good as they were a couple months ago? Why has that form not kept up over an even longer stretch or on another surface? Actually, I was wrong to say they'll win 10 grand slam- they're not winning any if they play like this.
Carlos Alcaraz is in this cycle at the moment. He was electric in the early part of the season, winning Rio, Miami, Barcelona then Madrid. He was scrappy during Roland Garros and Wimbledon and lost his first match in Montreal. The inquests are beginning, the nervous chatter increasing. Alcaraz will almost certainly be absolutely fine, but in the short term he is struggling and so he is now a disappointment.
We are so quick to build our athletes up and pull them down when they do not immediately meet our sky-high expectations. We should be screaming from the roof tops about how insanely good Coco Gauff is, but she is not wowing us with that exciting breakthrough anymore. Gradual progression is far less sexy and exciting than blockbuster slam titles in your teens.
In fairness, some of it is because she is no longer new. We've known about Coco Gauff for 3 years now, we know who she is on and off the court fairly well. She continues to improve and refine her game, but she isn't showing us something brand new. We know Gauff is a exceptional talent and consistently a top 20 player. But she is developing in front of our eyes.
Slowly, she is becoming a top 10 player. She is grinding out these tough, tight matches against top opposition. She could have made those wins more comfortable, but she recovered from her lapses and rallied to win. There are problems in her game still; she hits a lot of double faults (15 in total against Sabalenka) and her forehand can still produce a lot of errors. And yet she won both these matches in deciding set tiebreaks in spite of that. The flaws might still hold her back in the biggest matches, but they are becoming less apparent as time goes on. Gauff is winning because of her strengths, not in spite of those weaknesses.
The unbelievable talent is shining through. She has not been burnt or scarred by the dismantling she received against Swiatek at Roland Garros. Instead, she has only continued to grow. Gauff knows she is not going to wake up and suddenly go on a streak like Swiatek's or win a slam like Raducanu, but she is ok to go about her business the quieter route.
Indeed, she has shown brilliant maturity for one so young. It feels cliché to mention that word, "maturity", when it comes to Gauff but you have to. She is able to articulate herself so eloquently speaking about tennis and life beyond it; her openness on politics, particularly Black Lives Matter and abortion rights, is striking and amazing. Again, she is 18 years old. She is a marvel on and off the court.
I do not think she was ready to win Roland Garros this year. Her run was very impressive, but it came about because the draw opened up for her to do so. Better players fell at earlier hurdles, though, and something many of this current top 10 fail to do is take their chances when they arise. She is not yet ready to win a grand slam, but she will have learnt a lot from that run in Paris.
She was nervous and clinically taken apart by the best player in the world in her 35th consecutive win. I don't think there's much you can do about that. She was naturally upset, but she has not been broken by the humiliation on the biggest stage. Gauff has seen first hand how good you must be to win grand slams, she's going to get there herself in the next couple of years.
Gauff and Swiatek after the Roland Garros final. Source: Getty Images
Gauff handles every new big step in her career remarkably well. I might have expected her to collapse after the leads she let slip in Canada. She is able to compartmentalise those failures and errors and play through it. Sabalenka raised her game and punished a sloppy Gauff in the deciding set, but she did not roll over. Many players struggle with ugly tussles like this, but Gauff is used to them and can see herself through.
Entering the top 10 is a natural next step for Gauff. It is not a huge leap or barrier for her to break, she is not doing so in a short span of time like Alcaraz. Every young player has growing pains and difficulties adjusting when they reach a new echelon of tennis. Alcaraz is visibly struggling with that burden of success and expectation to win.
Coco Gauff, meanwhile, is in her 4th season on the tour at just 18. She has vast experience of tour life and tennis already and it will be invaluable to her. She might well struggle upon reaching the top 10, everyone does when they first get there. A majority of the WTA top 10 are in there first year at the ranking and many have spoken of the difficulties adjusting.
I do believe that Gauff is ready for those teething problems and growing pains, she has accepted they are necessarily to her evolution. With the amount of experience she already has, she will adapt better than most who have entered the highest rankings in one year surges winning big titles or reaching the latter stages of slams. It does not matter if you get to the top in a sprint or a marathon, you will be fine either way eventually, but the steady path makes life easier in my view.
Coco Gauff is an incredible player. She has already cemented herself as a mainstay of the WTA tour and will be one for years to come. She is 18 years old. We can throw all the lavish praise at her tennis and her off-court actions all we want, but I think we should always remember and remind you of her age. It makes everything she is achieving all the more remarkable.