Grand Gauff

“New York City is the city where dreams are made of.”

Those were the final words spoken by Coco Gauff as she finished up her championship press conference at the U.S. Open. Just hours before, the American teenager completed a three-set comeback in the U.S. Open Women’s Singles final.

On the final point, Gauff put on full display her elite athleticism and unrelenting effort. When her opponent, Aryna Sabalenka, came to net and hit a great volley, Gauff sprinted across the court and hit a running backhand winner down the line.

As she watched the ball go past Sabalenka and land safely inside the court, the 19-year-old American dropped to the ground and began sobbing on the Arthur Ashe Stadium court as her dream was realized.

“Oh my goodness, it means so much to me,” Gauff said in her post-match interview. “I feel like I’m a little bit in shock in this moment. That French Open loss was a heartbreak for me. But I realized God put you through tribulations and trials, and that makes this moment even sweeter than I could have imagined.”

Gauff referenced her defeat to Iga Swiatek in the 2022 French Open final as a pivotal turning point in her career and how she approached Grand Slam matches.

“I don’t know if they caught it on camera, but I watched Iga lift up that trophy and I watched her the whole time. I said, I’m not going to take my eyes off her, because I want to feel what that felt like for her. That felt like craziness today lifting this trophy. It hasn’t sunken in.”

That defeat last spring unleashed a different Gauff, and helped elevate her from a young player with Grand Slam potential, to an undeterred competitor who knew she could win a Grand Slam. It’s been a fast climb for Gauff, who went from budding young star, a teenage phenom just a few years ago, to now one of the premier players on the women’s tour.

And she now has the hardware to back it up.

“It’s been a long journey to this point, I wasn’t a fully-developed player, and I still think I have a lot of development to go at that moment,” Gauff reflected. “I think people were putting a lot of pressure on me to win. I felt that at 15 I had to win a Slam at 15. I think that was…a little bit of pressure that I was feeling. Now I just realize that I just need to go out there and try my best. I t was to the point where I remember I lost when I was 17, and there was a stat that said she’s not going to win a Slam before Serena’s age. It was stuff like that that I felt like I had a time limit on when I should win one, and if I won one after a certain age it wouldn’t be an achievement. It’s just crazy the amount of things that I have heard or seen about myself, but I’m really happy with how I’ve been able to manage it all.”

Gauff articulated perfectly the type of unfair pressure she felt when she first burst onto the scene at just 15-years-old, and how that affected how she approached her matches, but in more abstract terms, her career as a whole.

She credits the ability to overcome the pressure put on her to her upbringing and specifically her family, who have helped keep her grounded throughout these years.

“My mom always reminds me that I’m a person and I’m human, and that this tennis thing is just what I do, but it’s not who I am,” she said. “I think that helped me today because I realize regardless if I came home with this trophy or not, I’m still a human person and I still do a lot of good in this world outside of the court, so I think that reminded me. I think in the past I would label myself as a tennis player, and I felt like if I didn’t do well in tennis it means I wasn’t a good person. It took a lot of growth to realize the opposite.”

That maturity is something we have come to expect from Gauff, and it’s sometimes hard to imagine someone who is so young has such a strong perspective on things. And that has gone a long way in her finding sustained success on the court.

Prior to the U.S. Open, Gauff played the best tennis of her career during the summer. She captures titles in both Washington, D.C. and Cincinnati, which set the stage for her run in New York City. And in her run, she was forced to dig deep and demonstrate those life lessons she has learned and apply it to her tennis. She dropped the opening set in two of her matches en route to the final, including her opening round match, and then proceeded to struggle in the opening set against Sabalenka in the championship.

But Gauff was not going to let that get her down, and instead flipped the script on the match against Sabalenka.

“The biggest thing my grandfather says is, ‘Never say die’. I was telling myself that I wasn’t going to give up after the first set. I have come too far to do that,” she said. “My parents and my dad dream big, and he has a shirt today that said ‘Imagine’. I don’t know if he was wearing it during the match, but he showed me after the match. He showed me that imaginations can come true. It’s not always just the image in your head, you can make it a reality.”

And she certainly did make it a reality. All of that pressure, hard work, belief, determination and perspective have helped Gauff achieve one of her childhood dreams. In doing so, she became the youngest American to win the U.S. Open since one of her idols, Serena Williams, won it back in 1999, and moved into a career-high ranking of third in the world.

Gauff has come a long way since she stunned Venus Williams at Wimbledon at just 15-years-old, and is now in possession of a Grand Slam title. Gauff has everything she needs to maintain her spot at the top of the game, physically and mentally. On and off the court, Gauff provides the American public with a new superstar they can be proud of and root for years to come.