Hand of history too powerful to ignore
● In the maelstrom of the moment, Coco Gauff might have cared to note that she was the youngest woman to defeat a defending major champion since 1991. Instead, she seemed more fixated on grabbing a selfie with Rod Laver. Therein lies the surge of electricity that she has sent through the game: this blend of on-court assassin and dizzy teenage ingenue.
Even when she was on her tear through Wimbledon last summer, her smile was never broader than when she talked of being namechecked on Instagram by Beyonce’s mother.
Sometimes, though, the hand of history is too powerful to ignore. So it has proved in Melbourne, where, on the same day that Gauff dismantled Naomi Osaka in straight sets, Serena Williams, who won the first of 23 majors four years before her heiress presumptive was even born, tumbled to one of her tamest exits, at the hands of China’s Wang Qiang. One must be careful not to expect too much from a talent as precocious as Gauff’s, as Boris Becker has argued, but it was still tempting to perceive the passing of a flame.
In tennis, these flames can quickly burn themselves out. Look at Stefanos Tsitsipas: this time last year, the Greek was being lauded for a supposedly guard-changing victory over Roger Federer. Twelve months on, he has just been walloped by Milos Raonic.
Gauff, even at 15, embodies a quality that many of her peers on the men’s tour lack: consistency. Her burst to the last 16 at Wimbledon could so easily have been the product of pure audacity, never to be replicated in the same way.
In Australia, she has knocked off the same opening opponent in Venus Williams, who might have lost her edge, but not her aura, while advancing to a second fourth-round appearance in just her third major. It is this backing up of her brilliance that justifies her ever more breathless billing.
Gauff’s career is at the most delicate juncture. Though she is remarkably young to be cutting superstars down to size, Jennifer Capriati had reached two slam semifinals by the same age.
It was all too much, too soon for Capriati: after going on hiatus from tennis in 1993, at 17, she was caught in possession of marijuana and arrested for shoplifting a ring, later insisting that it was just a case of forgetfulness. Hers is the example that stands as the cautionary morality tale for Gauff. Not that anyone needs to worry just yet about Gauff suffering a Capriati-esque tailspin.
She is a person of such firm proprieties that at a tournament this month in Auckland, she upbraided her father, Corey, for using the word “damn”. Already, Gauff has the type of team around her who will protect her spotless image.