Coco Gauff’s journey from teenage prodigy to grand slam champion is over.
An odyssey that began four years ago, when a 15-year-old Gauff defeated Venus Williams in the pin-drop silence of Wimbledon’s No 1 Court, culminated amid the clamour and cacophony of Arthur Ashe Stadium as the American sixth seed, willed on by an impassioned New York crowd, recovered from a set down against Aryna Sabalenka to win the US Open.
On a potentially transformative night for American tennis and women’s tennis more widely, Gauff overcame a nervous start to chase, retrieve and problem-solve her way into the record books. The 19-year-old, who will rise to a career-high ranking of No 3 in the world following her 2-6, 6-3, 6-2 victory, becomes the first American teenager to triumph at a major since Serena Williams won at Flushing Meadows in 1999, and only the second woman this century to fight back from a set down in a US Open final. A year after Serena left the game on the same stage, Gauff grabbed the baton and ran with it, the latest addition to a rich lineage of teenage champions that also includes Chris Evert and Tracy Austin.
No sooner had the final ball been struck, sparking scenes of rich emotion as Gauff collapsed tearfully on to her back before embracing her family and team in the stands, than the United States Tennis Association announced a $3m initiative to refurbish public courts and facilities across the country. Already she is creating a legacy. The tradition of African-American champions that runs from Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe to Sloane Stephens and the Williams sisters is in good hands.
“It’s crazy,” said Gauff of seeing her name on the trophy alongside those of Venus and Serena. “I mean, they’re the reason why I have this trophy today, to be honest. They have allowed me to believe in this dream, growing up.
“You know, there weren’t too many black tennis players dominating the sport. Literally, when I was younger, it was just them that I can remember. Obviously, more came because of their legacy. So it made the dream more believable.
“But all the things that they had to go through, they made it easier for someone like me to do this. I mean, you look back at the history with Indian Wells, with Serena, all she had to go through, Venus fighting for equal pay. It’s crazy and it’s an honour to be in [the same] line-up as them.”
With Billie Jean King presiding over the coin toss and Spike Lee, Diane Keaton and Nicole Kidman among the stellar array of famous faces in the stands, the magnitude of the occasion appeared to weigh heavily on Gauff at first. It did not help that Sabalenka, the new world No 1 and most powerful ball-striker in the women’s game, was determined to play the match on her own terms. When the Belarusian pounded a searing backhand winner to break in the opening game, her triumphant bellow was probably audible on Staten Island. Lest anyone missed it, Sabalenka performed an encore five games later, by which time Gauff had clawed back one break only to suffer another.
Those early exchanges established a pattern that would define the evening, Sabalenka running her younger rival from pillar to post yet frequently struggling to apply the coup de grâce. The Belarusian, who won a maiden slam at the Australian Open in January, has compiled by far the most consistent season at the majors on the women’s tour, but too often she has been her own worst enemy. Sabalenka suffered agonising defeats in the French Open and Wimbledon semi-finals, missing a match point against Karolina Muchova in Paris before squandering a one-set lead against Ons Jabeur in SW19, and this would prove another occasion on which she was unable to keep matters in her own hands.
Gauff’s extraordinary athleticism meant Sabalenka was forever forced to land one more blow; to reload the heavy artillery, to find a little more ball speed and flirt a little more closely with the lines. Time and again, shots that would have been winners against almost any other player came back. As Sabalenka’s frustration mounted, so too did her unforced error count: she would end the contest with 46 in all, more than double Gauff’s 19.
Yet, for the 40 minutes it took Sabalenka to win the opening set, the match was on her racket. She was beyond consolation afterwards, struggling to speak during her on-court interview and laughing deliriously when it was plain all she really wanted to do was weep.
“In the first set I was dealing with my emotions quite good,” said Sabalenka. “I was focused on myself, not on the crowd or the way she moves.
“But then the second set, I probably started overthinking, and because of that I started, kind of, losing my power. Then she started moving better. I started missing a lot of easy shots.
“It’s a combination of everything. But I would say that today was more because of me. Not the whole match, but there were key moments in the second set which I lost, and those moments helped her to turn around the game.
“Afterwards, it was just her unbelievable defending game. But I would say that just because of that, key moments in the second set where it was more about me than her, I lost this match.”
The most significant such moment came at the start of the second set, when a Gauff double-fault handed Sabalenka two break points. Given the American’s resilience over the fortnight, it would be stretching a point to suggest that a break at that stage would have guaranteed Sabalenka the title. It would certainly have left Gauff in a precarious position, however, and it was her ability to hold firm at that key juncture that set her on the path to victory. She demonstrated the same quality when taken the distance in three of the first four rounds, most perilously in her opener against Laura Siegemund, and once again Gauff showed her mettle, averting the danger with a fine serve and a clever change of pace off the forehand. She would not look back.
In the latter stages, as Sabalenka’s forehand began to disintegrate and Arthur Ashe Stadium became a concrete cauldron of swirling, irresistible passion, the moments passed quickly for Gauff. In truth, they always have. Her entire career has been played out on fast-forward, and never more so than over the past six weeks. Since the nadir of a first-round loss at Wimbledon, it has been a summer of firsts, each landmark achievement outstripping the last. A maiden WTA 500 title in Washington was eclipsed by a maiden 1000 crown in Cincinnati, where she also notched up a first win in eight meetings with Iga Swiatek, the Pole who denied her in the final of Roland Garros last year. Now, finally, she has the biggest prize of all.
If it feels like destiny, that is probably not a coincidence. Asked to describe her run in three words, Gauff did not miss a beat.
“Dreams come true,” replied the champion. “This is crazy. I still have no words. I don’t think it can be put into words.
“There is a song lyric that I want to use for my Instagram caption: it goes, ‘Concrete jungle, where dreams are made of.’
“That lyric is true. New York City is the city where dreams are made.”