Tennis breakthroughs come in all different forms; there are smashing debuts, lightning-in-a-bottle tournaments. Saturday afternoon at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, we saw another variation: Poised and professional. A player who wasn’t necessarily at her best, but did what was needed to win.
That was Coco Gauff, who claimed her first Major title, winning the 2023 U.S. Open women’s title by beating Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus 2-6, 6-3, 6-2.
After losing the first set, Gauff would simply not be denied. And to the delight of a highly partisan crowd of 25,000—which included the likes of Kevin Garnett, Eli Manning and Mia Farrow mixed with thousands of fans attending their first match—she made history. That this victory came a year after Serena Williams announced her retirement at the same event added a layer of symmetry.
Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated
Gauff may be the best athlete in tennis, capable of powerful of shotmaking. But it was her defense, not her offense, that won the day. She was content to simply keep the ball in play and let her opponent make the error. The opponent obliged, and Gauff turned in a veteran performance that, in many ways, speaks more highly of her than any sort of transfixingly brilliant performance—not that she’s incapable of those. You might say she “won ugly.”
That of course is the catchphrase of Gauff’s coach Brad Gilbert. One must be cautious not to give too much credit to anyone but the player (she, after all, is the one on court who must execute the shots and control nerves). But one cannot overlook the fact that Gauff lost the first round of Wimbledon less than two months ago. Since then, she connected with Gilbert and she has won three of the four tournaments she’s entered, each one increasing in size, this first Major being the biggest. That’s a datapoint to make the case that this is causation and not correlation.
A word about Sabalenka. She inherited the No. 1 ranking this week when Iga Świątek of Poland lost in the fourth round. The 25-year-old Sabalenka reached the semi-finals of all four Majors this year, and won the Australian Open. But she played high-risk, high-reward tennis and was hardly at her best today. She won the first set and then simply retreated, winning only five more games. She committed 46 unforced errors on the day, many of them borne of frustration with Gauff’s defense. While she will likely look back at this as a successful tournament, she must be stunned by her play today.
As for Gauff’s side of the ledger, after winning match point, she fell to her back, equally giddy and relieved. She first broke through four years ago when she beat Venus Williams at Wimbledon, and was getting a bit impatient. No more. She is a dynamic star who is only getting started. For years, the tennis saying was that Gauff winning a Major was a question of when and not if. Now it is neither. She is the U.S. Open women’s champion, and there are certainly more to come.
