Teenage sensation hands out lesson to Venus
Weary veteran Venus falls to 15-year-old again Teenager on a ‘mission’ to be the game’s greatest
From an adult perspective, teenagers are an eternal enigma. Some struggle to tidy their room, while others achieve sporting greatness before they are old enough to drive.
Take Coco Gauff, who is 15 years and 315 days old today. Watching her repeat her Wimbledon triumph yesterday over Venus Williams (39 years, 219 days), it was easy to forget that this match had once again pitted the youngest player in the draw against the oldest.
Gauff ’s attributes are physical and psychological. Her athletic movement – built on a running style as smooth as an Olympic sprinter’s – is a unique gift. Her serve reached 118.7mph, the highest recorded by any woman all day. But what marks her out is her composure. Margaret Court Arena holds 7,500, and yet here was a schoolgirl playing without fear against a fivetime Wimbledon champion.
It was only at the post-match press conference, when Gauff was asked about her non-tennis life, that we were reminded of the generation gulf. “I don’t know if you guys know, there’s a new app called Tiktok,” she said, referring to the social media craze popular among teenagers. “I’m very active on that. I procrastinate a lot on that app. I have to do homework. Everyone thinks I’m so serious because of my on-court [persona]. I don’t take life too seriously. I like to have fun.”
Gauff ’s buoyant mood in the interview room contrasted with that of Williams – and this was not only down to the 7-6, 6-3 scoreline. At 39, Williams clearly feels she has already given a lifetime’s worth of answers. Win or lose, she no longer bothers to keep it interesting.
Asked to compare this match with their first-round meeting at last year’s Wimbledon – where Gauff won 6-4, 6-4 to kick off a week of febrile media attention – Williams replied: “She played really well, consistently, both matches.”
The same sense of world-weariness surfaced early in the match when Williams delivered double faults in both her opening service games. She had not played a competitive match since the Tianjin Open in October, having pulled out of her planned warm-ups citing hip trouble. In the opening few games, she resembled a classic car that you keep in a garage all winter, only to hear it cough and splutter when you try to coax it into life.
For a minute or two, one even wondered whether Williams might pick up a fine, under the new rule penalising players who carry injuries into the first round. Once she had reached operating temperature, however, she was competitive. The double faults were replaced by aces – seven of them in all – and she broke back to force a first-set tiebreak.
Gauff had to dig in and use her greater variety, which includes a nifty slice and a few drop shots, to expose the lack of explosiveness in those long Williams legs. “I resorted to trying to make her miss [for a while],” Gauff said. “But once I figured that wasn’t working, I had to get back to being aggressive.”
Extremely young players are not impossibly rare in women’s tennis. Only two years ago, Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk came through qualifying here to reach the third round, aged just 15 years and 214 days. She has not repeated the feat, however, and told an interviewer last summer: “I had this pressure [after the Australian Open] and I went too crazy about that.”
In Gauff ’s case, you imagine she will cope more effectively. “My mission is to be the greatest,” she said matter-of-factly. “That’s my goal, to win as many grand slams as possible.”
In the other highest-profile match of the day, top seed Ashleigh Barty survived some early collywobbles to post a 5-7, 6-1, 6-1 win over Lesia Tsurenko.
Asked about the pressure of home expectation, Barty replied: “I feel like I’m doing it the best way I know how. We’re loving it. We’re embracing it.” Meanwhile, Serena Williams looked smooth and controlled as she beat Anastasia Potapova by a convincing 6-0, 6-3 scoreline. But the 2017 US Open champion, Sloane Stephens, suffered a first-round exit for the second successive slam, losing 2-6, 7-5, 6-2 to China’s Zhang Shuai.