The prodigy looked out at a sea of faces she recognised only as recently won friends, cheerleaders, really, mutual strangers wondering what the other was thinking. Everyone loved her, though. She was the next big thing in women’s tennis, here to shake up the grand and ageing order. Asked if she could confirm where she lived – Boca Raton or Fort Lauderdale – she said with a sad smile: “It’s confidential where I live.”
Not Cori Gauff (who is happy to confirm she lives in Delray Beach, Florida) but Naomi Osaka. Remember her? She was talking after a significant moment of tennis history, only six months ago, when she beat Petra Kvitova to win the Australian Open, her second major on the spin – something only Serena Williams has done in recent years. She rose to No 1 in the world. Many millions flowed her way in endorsements. Nobody, at that point, had much heard of Cori “Coco” Gauff, just 15. Osaka is 21. Yesterday’s prodigy.
There has always been something fragile about Osaka. Struggling with injury, she checked out at Roland Garros. Her confidence battered, she arrived at Wimbledon edgy and unconvinced about her own chances on grass. Introspection struck. The second seed lasted an agonising hour and 36 minutes in the first round against the no-nonsense Kazakh Yulia Putintseva. Asked if the fact the women’s Tour is so strong made her defeat any more bearable, she looked near to tears. “No. That makes me feel worse because now there’s going to be more people that are saying, like, you know, exactly what you’re saying. So, no, it doesn’t make me feel better.”
Normally as open as a window, she point-blank refused to talk about why she had sacked her coach, Sascha Bajin, after they had won back-to-back majors together. In Melbourne she said it was because she refused to put, “results before happiness”. Now she had neither.
All of which is not to say that Gauff, the new darling, will suffer this depressing – and hopefully temporary – spiral into undiluted sadness. The outward signs are that the Atlanta-born teenager is on top of it. Certainly she was all over the five-times champion Venus Williams in the first round, just as Osaka was packing her bags.
Gauff, whose game-face is the polar opposite of her off-court visage – stern, fixed, professional – then had too much game for Magdalena Rybarikova, a former semi-finalist and, on the most memorable Friday evening most present could remember, she played the game of her life to see off the solid Polona Hercog, saving two match points and converting the first one that came her way, after two hours and 46 minutes.
What was remarkable about her performance was not so much the power and brilliance that carried her through the early exchanges and got her back to parity in a fighting second set but the maturity she showed at the finish. Rally after rally towards the end of the third turned into a test of patience and judgment, a war of slices and deep, measured ground strokes.
Hercog, 13 years older, the owner of three career titles in singles, a tour veteran who had seen it all, could do no more than go with her. There would be no grand finish. No flourishes to please the new audience. Gauff fought off the gathering tiredness and got the job done – at 15. It was an astonishing display.
She looks to have all the right people around her. Roger Federer’s Team8 management group handle the commercial side of her young career, which is about to balloon her bank account to breaking point. Gauff’s father, a former college‑level basketball player, handles coaching; her mother, a former teacher, takes care of her home-schooling. She has been a guest of Patrick Mouratoglou’s Mediterranean academy for several years. And she has just won at least a million hearts.
Like Osaka did before the inevitable disillusion and doubt arrived Gauff handles all inquiries with the uplifting sense of fun and wonderment only a teenager can understand. There will be time enough for tougher challenges and crises. Right now she is enjoying the fruits of her talent while staying focused on the only prize she is aiming at this fortnight: the women’s singles title. That is nonnegotiable. No, “second week would be good” nonsense.
There were some gnarled observers who were cynical about her pre-tournament claim that she wanted to be “the greatest”. Their predecessors thought the same of Cassius Clay before he knocked out Sonny Liston and morphed into Muhammad Ali.
There is plenty of dreaming left to do in this tournament before she is ready for her world title fight, though. On Monday she plays the former world No 1 Simona Halep, a considerable level up from her first three matches. The prize is a quarter-final against either of the unseeded Zhang Shuai, who outplayed Caroline Wozniacki, or Dayana Yastremska. Both are winnable.
What Gauff also has in common with Osaka, an endearing quality at that, is an ability to catch her older inquisitors totally off guard. Before questions got under way on Friday evening, she said, ever so politely: “I know this is off topic but I wanted to say please stream Erys by Jaden Smith. His album dropped yesterday.” So did a couple of dozen jaws. We are blessed to have her.
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