FORT WORTH, Texas — Watching Coco Gauff play tennis you could easily forget that she’s basically a high school kid who should be preparing for her senior prom, and filling out college applications.
She’s 18 years old, already one of the best players in the world, and an adult.
She is the product of a system, and a society via technology and exposure to more media, that unintentionally turns a kid into an adult faster than previous generations.
Coco is in Fort Worth to play the WTA Finals at Dickies Arena; she earned the spot as a result of being ranked as one of the top eight players in the world, both in doubles and in singles.
Coco is a lot of things, and what she isn’t is the next Serena.
There is no next Serena.
That is perfectly great.
Tennis could be looking at its next international star, or potentially another Naomi Osaka.
And Coco still won’t be Serena.
It’s been three months since Serena Williams played what she said is her final professional tennis match when she was eliminated from the 2022 U.S. Open.
Serena organically morphed into an international icon for her sport, for her race, for her gender. She was a face of the empowered female movement.
She also combined strength, power with femininity; the last quality is still a trait that the consuming public subconsciously still values, maybe above anything else, from its female icons.
As much as she might have been aided by a Nike or some other global corporate entity, she does not become a one-named brand without a game that was uniquely her own.
Trying to simulate all of this is a horrible idea.
“It takes time to see what it will be like; I really don’t know,” Gauff said of tennis without Serena; Gauff said this last week in a media session leading up to the WTA Finals.
“My whole life Serena has been dominating the game. So I really can’t answer that. But I think she’s changed the game.”
Serena made her pro debut in 1995. Coco was born in 2004.
Players her age are not going to remember how the sport looked, or was played, before Serena.
“I think the way the game is now is a product of her legacy. And I think when you look at it that way, it doesn’t really feel like she’s ever going to leave,” Gauff said. “Because there’s always products of her in the game, just with the way that people play, the way that people are aggressive on the baseline, the way that people model themselves and even the way she’s handled herself off the court.
“I’ve always said that her and Roger (Federer), at least in my lifetime, were always one of the first players to kind of go into mainstream non-tennis media and do big things. I think now it opened the door for players like me to make some moves in other industries other than tennis and sports.”
This is undeniably true.
It can also be too much.
We are not that far from the days when Naomi Osaka crushed Serena in straight sets at the 2018 US Open Finals. Osaka was 20 years old, and was on her way to reaching Serena status.
Didn’t happen. Or hasn’t happened.
As much as Osaka’s life has benefited from the money generated by the attention her success generated, there are parts of this profession that appears to be a lot for her to handle at the moment.
Osaka, who was at one time the No. 1 ranked player in the world and has won four Grand Slams, has pretty much vanished since the Summer Olympics, played last year.
Her high point in 2022 was reaching the final of the Miami Open in April where she lost to Iga Swiatek.
Osaka entered US Open unseeded, and was defeated in the first round by 19th-seeded American Danielle Collins in straight sets.
But Osaka, 25, has also already made generational wealth, and can fund exploring other interests besides tennis. That’s if she still even likes tennis.
To reach the higher levels of tennis, or most sports, now requires so much time at a young age it leads to burn out. Even while they excel at it, players are often sick of it.
Australian Ash Barty was the No. 1 ranked player in the world who retired from the sport in March at the age of 25.
Serena didn’t retire until she was 41.
Coco is 18.
“For me, I don’t look at it as a spotlight. I know a lot of people come up to me and say, you’re a celebrity or you’re special,” she said. “I’m not (laughs). I’m like any other person; my place in the world is just as important as your place in the world. So I don’t view myself as in some sort of spotlight.
”I don’t view myself as being on a pedestal. I view myself as everyone else. And I think that’s what makes it easier for me to, I guess, cope with everything.”
Coco was impacted by Serena, but she is not the next Serena.
Which is perfectly great.
