She casually pushed her colorful sunglasses into her hair. How you do it when you’re really cool. There is also a little dance, exuberant, happy, fidgety, after all, the girl in the video is only eight years old. Her name is Cori Gauff, which to this day hardly anyone knows because everyone calls her Coco. Back in 2012, she celebrated with joy the fourth US Open victory of her great idol Serena Williams. Eleven years later, Coco Gauff herself holds the solid sterling silver winner’s trophy made by Tiffany in her hands.
“I want to say so much, but I can’t really think of anything that does justice to this moment,” she admitted after the 2:6, 6:3, 6:2 against Australian Open winner Aryna Sabalenka in the final of the US Open 2023. There were three factors in particular that tipped the scales in favor of Gauff: her incredibly fast legs, her patience and her variable game. After clearly losing the first set, the young US star demonstrated an immense fighting spirit, as he has done several times in the tournament.
Congratulations from former President Obama
And now, at just 19 years old, Coco Gauff is the first US teenager on the US Open winners list since Serena Williams won her first of six titles in the Big Apple in 1999 as a 17-year-old. “I hope that many girls have seen this match and from now on believe that their name can also be on this trophy,” said the winner, whose first path after the match ball was turned into her father’s arms: “This day belongs to him too, without him I wouldn’t be here.”
Former President Barack Obama also expects that Gauff will not just triumph. “We couldn’t be prouder of you on and off the pitch and we know the best is yet to come,” the 62-year-old wrote in his congratulations.
Source: DW
