Coco Gauff continues to be an adolescent, in any case, and so it ought to shock nobody that she was on her cellphone within the locker room, scrolling by social media, proper up till 10 minutes earlier than heading out on courtroom for the U.S. Open closing.
What the 19-year-old from Florida was studying, she would say later, had been varied feedback, detrimental ones, “saying I wasn’t going to win today; that just put the fire in me.”
As a professional athlete from a younger age, as somebody of whom greatness has been anticipated by some and doubted by others, Gauff has all the time taken all of it in and stored shifting ahead, attempting to be taught from every setback. And now, at a event she used to go to as a child to see her idols, Serena and Venus Williams, Gauff is a Grand Slam champion herself and a licensed star.
Setting apart a so-so begin Saturday, Gauff surged to a 2-6, 6-3, 6-2 victory over the soon-to-be-No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka within the closing at Arthur Ashe Stadium, delighting a raucous crowd that backed her from begin to end.
When Gauff walked into her information convention — cellphone in hand, in fact — she observed that a big display screen on the again wall was rotating footage of her from the match. So she tucked her new silver trophy underneath one arm and used the opposite hand to snap a selfie with these images within the background.
“Right now I’m just feeling happiness and a very, very small bit of relief,” she defined. “Because honestly, at this point, I was doing it for myself and not for other people.”
Coco Gauff of the United States returns a shot in opposition to Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus throughout their Women’s Singles Final match on Day Thirteen of the 2023 U.S. Open at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center on September 09, 2023.
| Photo Credit:
AFP
Gauff, who’s from Florida, is the first American teenager to win the nation’s main tennis event since Serena Williams in 1999. If final 12 months’s U.S. Open was all about saying goodbye to Williams as she competed for the ultimate time, this 12 months’s two weeks in New York become a “Welcome to the big time!” second for Gauff. Famous individuals had been coming to observe her play, together with former President Barack Obama, who was amongst these sending congratulatory needs on Saturday.
Gauff burst onto the scene at 15 by changing into the youngest qualifier in Wimbledon historical past and making it to the fourth spherical in her Grand Slam debut in 2019. She reached her preliminary main closing at final 12 months’s French Open, ending because the runner-up to Iga Swiatek, a loss that stung.
“I watched Iga lift up that trophy, and I watched her the whole time,” Gauff recalled. “I said, ‘I’m not going to take my eyes off her, because I want to feel what that felt like for her.’”
Another down second got here this July at the All England Club, the place she exited within the first spherical. Since then, she has gained 18 of 19 matches, and now 12 in a row, whereas working with a brand new teaching pair of Brad Gilbert and Pere Riba.
The No. 6-seeded Gauff did it Saturday by withstanding the ability displayed by Sabalenka on practically each swing of her racket, finally getting accustomed to it and managing to get again shot after shot. Gauff broke to start the third set on one such level, monitoring down each ball hit her approach till finally smacking a putaway volley that she punctuated with a fist pump and a scream of “Come on!”
Soon it was 4-Zero in that set for Gauff. Didn’t take lengthy for her to shut it out, then drop to her again on the courtroom, earlier than climbing into the stands to search out her dad and mom.
“You did it!” Gauff’s mother advised her, each in tears.
In addition to her trophy, Gauff was handed an envelope with the champion’s $Three million paycheck, the identical quantity Novak Djokovic or Daniil Medvedev will get after the boys’s closing on Sunday. This is the 50th anniversary of when the 1973 U.S. Open grew to become the first main sports activities occasion to pay ladies and men equal prize cash; the one that led that effort, Hall of Fame participant and rights advocate Billie Jean King, was readily available Saturday.
“Thank you, Billie,” Gauff said, “for fighting for this.”
Sabalenka got here in 23-2 at majors in 2023, together with a title at the Australian Open. The 25-year-old from Belarus already was assured of rising from No. 2 to No. 1 within the rankings subsequent week (Gauff shall be No. Three in singles, No. 1 in doubles).
That rating milestone is “why I’m not super depressed right now,” Sabalenka mentioned, then joked: “I’m definitely going to be. I’m definitely going for a drink tonight — if I’m allowed to say that.”
She was decreased to the function of foil by the followers in 23,000-capacity area. Setting the tone, Gauff’s pre-match TV interview, proven within the area, was drowned out by the sound of applause and yells reverberating off the closed retractable roof.
Winners by Gauff had been celebrated as if the match had been over. So had been Sabalenka’s miscues. When Sabalenka heard cheers in the course of the post-match ceremony, she joked: “You guys could have supported (me) like this during the match.”
By the top, she had 46 unforced errors, Gauff 19. Here’s one other strategy to view it: Gauff solely wanted 13 winners to build up 83 factors.
“Sometimes, I can get emotional,” Sabalenka mentioned. “Today on the court, I was overthinking and I was missing … balls I shouldn’t be missing.”
When Sabalenka has all the things calibrated excellent, it’s tough for any foe to deal with it — even somebody as speedy, good and instinctive as Gauff, whose get-to-every-ball courtroom protection stored factors alive.
Sabalenka credited Gauff’s very good protection — “definitely, she was moving just unbelievable” and “I always had to play like an extra ball” — but additionally thought many errors had been “more about me than her. I lost this match.”
When Sabalenka was on-target early, she dominated. During a four-game run to shut the opening set, one thrilling level had the viewers making noise earlier than it was over. Gauff scrambled to get Sabalenka’s strokes again, together with by some means deflecting a booming overhead, earlier than a second, unreachable overhead bounced into the seats.
Sabalenka raised her left hand and wagged her fingers, telling spectators to provide her some love.
But quickly, Gauff was enjoying higher, Sabalenka was off-target extra, and the love was being showered solely on one in every of them, the game’s latest Grand Slam champion.
“Many more to come,” Sabalenka mentioned, “I’m pretty sure.”
That will now be the stress positioned on Gauff: When’s the subsequent one? That’s no simple burden. Consider: Two of the earlier 4 U.S. Open girls’s champions had been teenagers at the time, Bianca Andreescu in 2019 and Emma Raducanu in 2021, and neither has come near replicating that success but.
Gauff’s maturity on and off a courtroom ought to assist her now as a lot as ever.
“I have just been embracing every positive and negative thing that’s said about me. I realize sometimes people have different personalities and some people need to shut off the comments and not look at them. But I’m an argumentative person. I’m very stubborn,” mentioned Gauff, who chatted with her boyfriend till 1 a.m. the evening earlier than the largest match of her life thus far. “My parents know: If they tell me one thing, I like to do the other.”
Spoken like a real teen.
