Coco Gauff used to visit the Grand Slam tournament（大满贯锦标赛）as a kid to see her idols Serena and Venus Williams. Now she is a champion there herself. On Sept 9, the 19-year-old from the US won her first major women's singles title at the 2023 US Open（美国网球公开赛）.
After an average start, Gauff surged to a 2-6, 6-3, 6-2 victory over her bigger, stronger opponent, Aryna Sabalenka, from Belarus, who became the new world No.1 the day after the tournament ended.
Unlike the Williams sisters, who have obvious force and power, Gauff is small and slim. But she moves fast on the tennis court. Forbes magazine said, "She is the quickest and perhaps already the best returner of impossible shots in tennis history."
Even though Sabalenka is a very powerful hitter, it felt like she had to finish each point four or five times, as Gauff's defense was so perfect, noted The Telegraph. This ended up frustrating Sabalenka and caused her to make 46 unforced errors.
Gauff thus became the first American teenager to win the US Open since Serena Williams, then 17, in 1999. When asked about "taking the torch" from the 23-time Grand Slam winner and the similarity between their tennis careers, Gauff told ESPN, "Serena is Serena. She's the greatest of all time... I'd hope to do half of what she did. But I'm not going to compare myself to her. She's some one that I look up to."
Now, Gauff's big win has left tennis fans wondering: When's her next Grand Slam? That's no easy task. Two of the past four US Open women's champions were teenagers at the time, Canada's Bianca Andreescu in 2019 and the UK's Emma Raducanu in 2021, and neither has come close to repeating their success yet. But one thing about Gauff is certain--that at just 19 years old, the sky's the limit.
