By Chiara Piacentini
Staff Writer
After defeating her second-seeded opponent, Aryna Sabelanka, in a three-set match in Arthur Ashe Stadium, Coco Gauff took home the 2023 U.S. Open Championship trophy along with $3 million. This marks her first ever professional major tournament win. The sixth-seeded player becomes one of the youngest tennis stars to win the Open since Serena Williams’ victory in 1999. This is also a huge win for American tennis after six years without an American winner.
It has been a long but rewarding road to success for Gauff. Just last year, she experienced a heartbreaking defeat in the final of the French Open. She claimed that she had the wrong mindset during that match because she imagined that she had won the tournament. This kept her off her game. She suffered the same fate in the 2023 Wimbledon tournament when she got knocked out of the first round by another American, Sofia Kenin. After this disappointment, Gauff decided to hire a couple new coaches to improve her forehand and pressure tolerance. Fast forward to her Sept. 9 match this year, and she came onto the court with more emotional maturity and armed with stronger tactics. Game. Set. Match.
It makes sense given her journey that by the end of this match, Gauff collapsed to the ground and broke into tears of joy, surprise and a tiny bit of relief.
“It felt like it hit all at once,” she said “Because I didn’t want to tell myself it was match point because I didn’t want to start shaking,”
The moment when she realized she had won, Gauff recalled, “I was a little bit shocked and I couldn’t breathe either.”
Gauff trained herself to come into the match with low expectations to avoid a repeat of the 2022 French Open. She even credits her boyfriend for helping her power through most of the match when she confessed to calling him the night before the big game, as reported by People.
“I just called up my boyfriend and I told him let’s talk until it’s time to go to sleep so we spoke until 1:00 a.m. and then went to sleep,” she said.
After suffering a loss in the first set, this late-night talk gave her the much-needed encouragement to “give it [her] all” in the next two sets.
“When I lost the first set, I still felt I was into the match and I said, you know, I’m going to give it my all,” she told reporters. “You know, whatever happens happens.”
Celebrities have since been congratulating her left and right. Among them are several tennis all-time greats, including Roger Federer, Venus Williams, Serena Williams and Billie Jean King. Even a couple former presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and the current president himself praised the star for her ground-breaking achievement.
“You’ve made America so proud,” President Joe Biden said of the athlete on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Biden further went out of his way to congratulate Gauff by calling her over the phone, according to ESPN.
“Coco, this is Joe Biden,” Biden said to her. “Congratulations.”
Gauff also had the privilege of meeting Barack and Michelle Obama, as they had been watching the whole match from the stands.
Sept. 9 was such a whirlwind of a day that Gauff still cannot believe her win is real.
“It’s so crazy, I don’t think I’ve gotten to digest,” she said in an interview with TODAY, “Even last night I was telling myself, ‘You’re a Grand Slam champion.’ It doesn’t feel real at all.”
