Cori “Coco” Gauff: Rising Star of American Tennis Prepares for Australian Open

Last September, she turned America upside down. Well, the United States at least. By winning her first Grand Slam title in New York at the age of 19, Cori Gauff followed in the footsteps of her idol and model Serena Williams, instantly surpassing the aura of a “simple” tennis champion. Generating so much emotion and expectations at such a young age is not easy, and it would be human to need time to digest it. But the American is made of special wood and already seems ready to do it again at the Australian Open where she will launch her campaign against the Slovak Anna Karolina Schmiedlova this Monday.

In fact, she is approaching the event in the shoes of one of the four favorites. Like Iga Swiatek, Elena Rybakina and Aryna Sabalenka, she impressed in her first week of competition in January, retaining her title in Auckland where she only dropped one set (in 5 matches) against Elina Svitolina in the final. . In other words, she is not one to rest on her laurels and has not dwelled long on her accomplishment, historic as it may be.

An overflowing and assumed ambition

“I think it took me about a week,” she said at a pre-tournament press conference. “When I went to China, I had almost put it out of my head. Then, during the “Offseason, we celebrated it a little bit because after the US Open, everything happened so quickly. But now that I’m approaching another Grand Slam, I feel like it’s been so long. Everything It depends on the individual. For some players, the ultimate goal is to win a Grand Slam. Once they achieve it, they wonder what’s next. I always knew I wanted to win more than one. It was sort of easy to forget what I had done. Well, not ‘forget’, that’s not the right word. But maybe just to leave it in the past and project ourselves into the future.

The stat that shows Gauff has everything to be “a Serena Williams character”

In this, Gauff distinguishes herself from Dominic Thiem who, by his own admission, had difficulty finding motivation after landing the Moon in New York in 2020. Since a young age, she has assumed a devouring ambition . And if she does not reveal a very precise objective, she admits that she would like to reach a “double-digit number”, or register at least ten Majors on her list.

But in the meantime, she has already learned a great lesson from her triumph at Flushing Meadows. “What I really learned from last summer was that tennis was a mental game more than anything else. Honestly, from Wimbledon to the US Open, I progressed, but not to the point that “There is a drastic difference between my elimination in the 1st round and my Grand Slam victory. Yes, I have improved, but more on the mental side. I know the value and the power of the mind, and I have I need to remind myself of that for the rest of my life. Even if I feel like I’m not playing well, my mind can change things,” she said.

Gilbert and the mental click

Because if Gauff quickly set the goal of winning several Majors, we can easily imagine how impatient she was to open her account. Especially since his arrival with fanfare at the highest level at Wimbledon at the age of 15, all observers expected to see the prodigy quickly transform the test. She therefore had to change her perspective in relation to the expectations of others and the pressure she put on herself.

“Coming into the US Open, I felt like I was having a bad season, and I was almost already looking forward to the next one and the Australian Open. This state of mind relaxed me a lot I took the matches one after the other, I realized that in the end, the worst that could happen to me was to lose in the first round like at Wimbledon. Obviously, it sucked , but it wasn’t the end of the world. The sun still shines, I still have my family and friends. I realized that losing wasn’t that bad and I just had to focus on the fight and enjoy it. When it’s 5-5 in the third set, enjoy that battle instead of thinking, ‘What if I lose?'”

On this point, the arrival of Brad Gilbert in his team did him a lot of good. The singer of “Winning Ugly” helps him gain more perspective and pleasure. Already a born fighter, she has only become more formidable, even though she still has plenty of room for improvement tennis-wise, particularly on the forehand side. Convinced that she had not played her best tennis at the US Open, her success reinforced the innate confidence she already had in herself. The competition is warned.

2024-01-14 17:27:00
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