(Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)
If you hadn’t heard of Cori “Coco” Gauff before, then you probably have now. Cori Gauff, who goes by “Coco,” is taking the tennis world by storm. The 15-year-old teenager is making history literally every time she steps onto Wimbledon’s courts.
Already the youngest ever to emerge from qualifying and youngest since 1991 to win a match in the main draw when she beat idol Venus Williams, the teen star American became the first player to win a full match under the oldest grand slam’s new Court One roof.
Her recent rise to stardom is the culmination of years of hard work and dedication, which, in many ways, was a true family effort.
Her mom Candi said that even though it may be hard to believe now, but when Gauff was age 7, she was the worst player in her tennis program.
Despite her lack of obvious ability, Coco’s attitude when “running after every ball” demonstrated a mindset that few children have.
“Her desire never changed so we knew as parents that we wanted to give her the best opportunity to be successful, she just needed training,” her mother told CNN.
(Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)
She grew up in Atlanta, but moved to Delray Beach, Florida to have better opportunities to train in tennis. Her father played basketball at Georgia State University and her mother was a track and field athlete at Florida State University. She has two younger brothers. Gauff is home-schooled by her mother, a former teacher. Her father is her head coach. She is nicknamed “Coco”.
Before she was born, Candi did track and field at Florida State while dad Corey played basketball at Georgia State.
Gauff has trained with Gerard Loglo at the New Generation Tennis Academy in Delray Beach, Florida. When she was 11, she was selected by Serena Williams’s coach Patrick Mouratoglou as part of his Champ’Seed foundation and trained with him in Nice, France.
She soon reached No. 1 in the junior rankings and at the age of 13 became the youngest US Open junior finalist.
In October 2018 Gauff signed her first multi-year sponsorship contract, with New Balance. In March 2019 she announced…
… a multi-year sponsorship agreement with Italian food company Barilla, which also sponsors #3 world ranked player, Roger Federer.
Among the 26 players who won their first Slam match before turning 16, six would go on to become No. 1 in the world: Martina Hingis, Arantxa Sánchez Vicario and Tracy Austin — in addition to Steffi Graf, Monica Seles, and Jennifer Capriati.
“I’ve never played on a court so big,” Gauff said. “I had to remind myself that the lines on the court are the same size. Everything around it might be bigger, but the lines are the same. After every point, I was just telling myself to stay calm.”
“I want to be the greatest,” she said.
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