Gauff has a unique ability to draw energy from a crowd, and they from her. This has been true ever since she beat Venus Williams in the first round at Wimbledon in 2019. Gauff was new to the professional tour, ranked 313th, and unknown outside of tennis circles. She was also, at 15, the youngest woman to qualify for Wimbledon in the Open Era. When she won match point, Gauff allowed herself two seconds to absorb the shock before making a line for Williams. “Isaid, ‘Thank you for everything you’ve done,’ ” Gauff told the BBC later. “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for her. I told her she was so inspiring, and I’ve always wanted to tell her that but I’ve never had the guts to before.” Moments after the two shook hands and exchanged words, Gauff knelt down on one knee, braced herself with her racket, and prayed.
Her composure was as stunning as her athleticism. So was her ability to get out of herself, to see the bigger picture from above, while in the throes of a massive adrenaline rush. When Gauff won the US Open, she was four years older and ranked No.6. She was wearing her signature shoe by New Balance, and she was one of the highest paid female athletes in the world. She was a global celebrity whose matches had been watched courtside by Justin Bieber and the Obamas. But as Gauff quickly made clear, this was the same person.
Gauff lay down on the court and covered her face with her hands. She got up and hugged Sabalenka. Then she dropped to her knees in the doubles alley, braced herself with her racket, and prayed. “I don’t pray for results,” she said during the trophy ceremony. “I just ask that I get the strength to give it my all. And whatever happens, happens.”
From the stage, Gauff thanked her parents: her mom, Candi, a former college track star and teacher who homeschooled Gauff from third grade through high school; and her dad, Corey, a former college basketball player who had served as her primary coach. “My dad took me to this tournament, sitting right there watching Venus and Serena compete, so it’s really incredible to be on this stage,” Gauff said. She thanked the rest of her team, and everyone else in her box. She thanked her grandparents. She thanked her brothers. She thanked New York, and all the workers at the competition: “all the ball kids, photographers, staff behind the scenes, everyone who made this tournament possible.” She even thanked her doubters. “Honestly, thank you to the people who didn’t believe in me,” she said. “To those who thought they were putting water on my fire, you were really adding gas to it. And now I’m really burning so bright right now.” When she was presented with her prize, a check for $3million, Gauff held the envelope in the air and turned to Billie Jean King, whose activism won equal pay for women players at the US Open in 1973, half a century earlier. “Thank you, Billie, for fighting for this,” she said loudly into the mic.
To tennis heads, Gauff’s triumph was even sweeter for the fact that she had been on defense. “She wasn’t playing well at all, but it didn’t matter,” said Sophie Amiach, a TV commentator and former pro seated next to me at the gala. “She was just gonna die to bring one more ball back.” There was also much intrigue surrounding the role of her new coach, Brad Gilbert, the ESPN commentator and former world No. 4 who once coached Andre Agassi. Gilbert is known for emphasizing the psychological aspects of tennis, what he has called “the brain game.” His classic book, Winning Ugly, is a field manual for waging mental warfare on the court. Gilbert was at the gala, too, and after the official draw ceremony and a rousing speech by the governor of Quintana Roo, he wandered over to the media table. “Coco gave me grief about my shoes,” he told the group.
Gilbert was wearing a white suit, per the dress code, with sneakers that were mostly black. Gauff did not approve. She did like his suit. She felt his white pocket square was on point. But she was not crazy about his belt, which was brown. “She gave me the big two-thumbs-down on my belt,” Gilbert told me later. “She said I would have won best-dressed but she was disappointed in my shoes.
I said, ‘You’re right, I should have had white sneakers.’ ”
AIR COCO
Gauff’s game can be ultraphysical, like that of a track star doing sprints along the baseline. Sacai dress and shorts.
It was Gauff’s dad, Corey, who pushed her to work with Gilbert. (He also urged her to bring in Pere Riba, the former pro from Spain who coached her for a few months over the summer.) After the meeting at Wimbledon, her mom, Candi, got the Winning Ugly audiobook and started listening to it. She liked how practical the guidance was. “I said, ‘This is the part that she needs,’ ” Candi told me.
The dissatisfaction never ends, she said. “By theory you’re always striving for more, because you’re never going to be perfect. The day I’ll play every match and win every point and not make any mistakes, that’s when I’ll reach perfection. Which will never happen.” Having experienced the downside of this approach, Gauff set about to retrain her mind. “I’m trying to do more of, you know, accepting the good shots. And giving myself as much of a compliment as I do a critique.”
