The story of Coco Gauff: the rise of a champion.

After taking out the top honor at Flushing Meadows, we take a look at Coco Gauff’s rise and how a teenager was set on a trajectory to take out a Grand Slam title at the US Open, a feat not done since the GOAT herself Serena Williams.

Chapter 1. Athletic Genes

Couri Dionne Gauff known as Coco was born in Atlanta Georgia on 13th March 2004.

Coco has athletic genes with both her parents being Division I NCAA athletes. Her mother, Candi Gauff, had been a track and field athlete at Florida State University, where she competed in the heptathlon. Candi won South Florida Sun Sentinel Athlete of the Year twice. Prior to Track and Field Candi was a gymnast but switched sports when her parents would not allow her to move to train. Candi went on to become an educator and later had to home-school Coco due to her competition schedule, taking schooling so seriously that Coco was completing tests during Wimbledon.

Her father Corey Gauff, played basketball at Georgia State University, later working as a healthcare executive. Corey later became Coco’s primary coach, with the assistance of other coaches for technical expertise when she began playing tennis at age 6 in Atlanta.

Coco also has two younger brothers — Cameron and Codey.

Coco experimented with gymnastics, soccer, basketball like her father, and track relays like her mother. But Coco quickly showed passion for tennis being quoted saying:

“I wasn’t much of a team person. I loved tennis. I was so-so about it in the beginning because when I was younger I didn’t want to practice at all. I just wanted to play with my friends.

Chapter 2. Childhood Prodigy

Coco showed early promise in her tennis ability.

Her family elected to move to Delray Beach, Florida as the training opportunities were better for Coco when she was just seven years old. The family followed the blueprint laid out by the Williams sisters’ road to success, who had also moved to Delray Beach, a town with a rich tennis history.

Both her parents gave up their careers to help Coco pursue her dreams. Corey became Coco’s full-time coach and Candi became her home-schooling teacher.

In 2012 Coco Gauff won the Under 8s National Championship — Little Mo. It was here she met one of her tennis idols, Serena Williams, for the first time.

“When I turned eight, that was when I played ‘Little Mo’ and after that I decided to do that for the rest of my life.”

Her family did not have the funds to send her to prestigious tennis academies such as IMG, often costing $60,00 — $80,000 per year, that many of the American tennis juniors who had seen some success had access to such as Sloan Stephens and Madison Keys. Coco earned scholarships to the prestigious Mouratoglou Academy in France through the Champ’Seed Foundation which aims to help juniors without the financial resources to access the expensive high end training. Her parents supplemented her father Corey’s coaching with technical assistance from various tennis academies as Corey had limited tennis experience growing up.

Coco went on to win a series of tournaments as amongst the youngest people ever to do so. At the age of 10, Coco won the USTA Clay Court National Under 12s championship to become the youngest champion in the tournament’s history. She made it to the semi-finals the Les Petits As 14 and Under at the age of just 12. At her junior grand slam debut at the US Open in 2017 she finished runner-up, not dropping a single set before the final, becoming the youngest girl in history to make the final.

Even as a child Coco’s star was quickly on the rise. Coco was so good that she received her first sponsorship from Nike at 10 years old. Coco became a fixture of national media outlets, covering her success at the junior level as America looked for its next tennis superstar, with media outlets writing articles about the young star as young as 12 years old.

Coco rose through the ranks of junior tennis to world no. 1 by the time she was 14, taking out the girl’s title at the French Open to win her first junior grand slam title. Coco had become a fixture of the final rounds in the top junior tournaments around the world.

But there are plenty of junior champions that don’t see success at the senior levels, let alone at such a young age. There was still a question mark over whether Coco Gauff’s trajectory would continue…

Chapter 3. Going Pro

Coco Gauff elected to go pro at the age of 14, making her debut on the ITF women’s circuit in May 2018.

In her first ever grand slam tournament at the age of 15 Gauff became the youngest player ever to qualify for the main draw at Wimbledon, with a shock upset to her idol Venus Williams, in straight sets. After the game Coco Gauff said thank you to Venus not only for the game but for everything, she had done for the sport. Venus had won her first grand slam title before Coco was even born. She went on to make it to the fourth round of the tournament to lose to then World №1 Simona Halep.

After earning a wildcard entry to the US Open, she had another successful Grand Slam tournament which saw her make the third round to be defeated by then World No. 1 Naomi O’Saka.

She won the Linz Open to become the youngest player to win a WTA singles event since 2004. She made her top 100 WTA ranking debut at the age of 15 following the success of her 2019 season.

Chapter 4. A Rising Star

Entering the year 2020 Gauff was ranked at 67. Coco had another year of success, seeing her consistently making deep runs in Grand Slam Tournaments.

In 2020, Gauff made it to the 4th round of the Australian Open including defeats of Naomi O’Saka and Venus Williams. 2021 saw Gauff crack the top 25 of the WTA rankings for the first time. Success at tournaments early in the year including both a singles and doubles win at the Emilia-Romanga Open in Parma was the first player since Maria Sharapova in 2004 to win both a Singles and Doubles title at the same tournament.

Gauff was selected to represent the US at the Tokyo Olympics and would have become the second youngest player to do so if she had not tested positive for COVID-19 forcing her to withdraw from the team.

As Coco’s star rose, she accumulated prize money and endorsements being sponsored by New Balance since she was 14 years old and received her own signature tennis shoe with the brand in 2020, the CG1 which she wore for the first time at the US Open that year.

The 2021 French Open was the first time Gauff had been seeded at a Grand Slam tournament, making the quarterfinal as the youngest American at 17 years old and 3 months to make it this far in a grand slam tournament since Venus Williams in 1997. This made Gauff the youngest American to be ranked in the WTA top 25 since Serena Williams in 1998, and the youngest player that featured in the WTA 100 rankings for 2021.

2022 was another successful year for Gauff seeing her enter the top 10 in the WTA rankings for the first time. Making her first major grand final at the French Open, Coco lost in straight sets to Iga Swiatek. In 2022, Coco Gauff became the youngest player in the singles category in 18 years since Maria Sharapova to qualify for the WTA year-end finals championship.

Off the court, Gauff had become a likable figure in the media, just average 19-year-old who enjoyed supporting their favorite local sports teams from her native Florida, the Miami Dolphins and Miami Heat to being a fan of anime including Naruto. However, on the court, Gauff was demonstrating poise and determination under pressure that would become essential in her run to a Grand Slam title the following year.

Chapter 5. Winning at the Highest Level

By 2023 Coco had established herself as a contender at the top levels of women’s tennis so expectations were high in the lead-up to the US Open, being one of America’s biggest chances to take out the top prize on home soil.

Gauff had been playing well all year, making deep runs at the majors, and took out her biggest singles title yet at the Washington Open a WTA 500 event. Along the way to victory, she took down Iga Swiatek in the semi-final, who had beat Gauff in the French Open Final the year before.

Coco Gauff fought through the early rounds, but her run to the finals was not an easy road. In the quarter-final against German Laura Siegemund, she had to stand up for herself when her opponent was taking extended breaks outside of the rules to umpires who were not treating her fairly by calling the violation. In stark contrast to how the media had treated Serena, Gauff’s idol, 20 years ago when doing the same thing prior to the introduction of Hawk-Eye technology automating line calls, the public sentiment and media narrative around the teenager standing up for herself was largely positive. It felt like a moment signifying progress, that something had changed not just in tennis or the media, but society more broadly.

Protestors interrupted her semifinal match, resulting in a 45-minute delay of the game as one of the climate activists had glued their bare feet to the ground and had to be forcibly removed by security and police. Gauff went on to win the match, again showing a level of calm and poise it would be unreasonable to expect of 19-year-old.

Coming from behind, Coco rallied to win the final Sabalenka in fairytale ending that made Gauff the first teenager to win the tournament since the GOAT herself Serena did it in 1999.

Taking out her first grand slam title on home soil after bursting onto the women’s tennis scene four years ago with a statement at Wimbledon as a 15-year-old, Coco’s story is truly special but perhaps the most exciting part is that we are only in the first chapter.