Coco Gauff, tennis superstar, gets homecoming celebration
Cori “Coco” Gauff has her picture taken during a welcome home party at Delray Beach’s Pompey Park on Saturday.
Cori “Coco” Gauff left sunny London to return home to a soggy South Florida. The teen tennis phenom who grabbed most of the Wimbledon headlines was center court, as it were, for a homecoming celebration in Delray Beach on Saturday afternoon.
About 150 fans, friends and family gave up on the outdoor ceremony at Pompey Park, moving inside to the gymnasium when what Gauff ’s aunt — Joi Odom Grant, who emceed the event — called “liquid sunshine” forced organizers to abandon the expansive basketball courts.
“Honestly the first thing I wanted to do was see my brothers and go to sleep,” Gauff, 15, says of her return to Delray Beach. “My grandfather likes to cook, so I got some of his home cooking, so that was good.”
But now Gauff says it’s time to buckle down for her next tournaments. The homecoming was also her last media event before she focuses on practice.
“I’ll be [competing] at Citi Open and then the U.S. Open,” she said, before adding, “I wanted to do something with the community.”
The “Welcome Home From Wimbledon” celebration was hosted by Healthier Delray Beach (Gauff’s grandmother serves on the steering committee) and the City of Delray Beach, which chose Pompey Park because that is where Gauff ’s tennis career began. She still occasionally practices there, near the baseball fields that are named after her grandfather.
Speakers included her mother, Candi Gauff, her pastor, Reverend Jovan T. Davis of St. John Missionary Baptist Church in Boynton Beach, Kenya Madison from Healthier Delray Beach and Shelly Petrolia, the Mayor of Delray Beach.
“I just may have to change locks of the city so that I can once again be honored in handing you another key to the city,” Petrolia joked. “That may be happening. We’re not going to get a lot of work done when you’re on those courts. We’re all sitting there watching.”