Teen tennis athlete Coco Gauf wins U.S. Open
The teenage sports wonder from Florida, 19-year-old Coco Gauff, won her first major tennis match at the U.S. Open on September 8 at the Arthur Ashe Stadium in Flushing, New York. Her victory came against veteran tennis champion, Aryna Sabalenka, in a 2-6, 6-3, 6-2 win, according to ESPN. Following her big win, Gauf fell to the ground in a happy and shocked state of excitement and shed tears of joy in a now viral video – before rising to her feet once again to hug her opponent.
After running up and hugging her parents and her team at the star-studded event, Gauf regained her composure just enough to speak to the crowd directly – admitting that she was still in a state of shock over her big win.
“Oh my goodness, it means so much to me,” Gauff told ESPN’s Mary Joe Fernandez. “I feel like I’m a little bit in shock in this moment. That [2022] 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.”
The world first came to know Gauf when she was only 15 years old and when she became “the youngest qualifier in Wimbledon history, making it to the fourth round in her Grand Slam debut in 2019,” according to The Associated Press.
And only fours later, Gauf is now in the record books as being the youngest American to win the U.S. Open since Serena Williams did it in 1999. Following her win yesterday, Gauf told the media that she was honored to have her name emblazoned on the same trophy as Serena and Venus Williams.
“I mean, they’re the reason why I have this trophy today, to be honest,” Gauff said. “They have allowed me to believe in this dream. Growing up, there weren’t too many Black tennis players dominating the sport. It was literally, at that time 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.”
And in addition to that iconic U.S. Open trophy, the 19-year-old also had a huge payday. Following her win yesterday, she “was handed an envelope with the champion’s $3 million paycheck, the same amount Novak Djokovic or Daniil Medvedev will get after the men’s final Sunday,” according to NBC Sports. Gauf’s opponent in the U.S. Open, Aryna Sabalenka, also earned a decent payday at $1.5 million as runner-up in the match.
This is the 50th anniversary of when the 1973 U.S. Open became the first major sports event to pay women and men equal prize money; the person who led that effort, Hall of Fame player and rights advocate Billie Jean King, was on hand Saturday.
Gauf mentioned Billie Jean King by name yesterday when speaking to the press, saying, “Billie Jean King. Thank you, Billie, for fighting for this.”
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~ Posted by Richard Webster, Ace News Today
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