Don’t let Coco Gauff have a sniff of victory. Don’t get in a situation where a match becomes about more than just the tennis. Don’t open the door even a little bit for her to knock down.
Because if you’re on the other side of the net against this special 21-year old from Atlanta via Delray Beach, Florida, and there’s a big trophy on the line, there might not be anybody in sports mentally tougher or better prepared for the ugliness of a true battle.
Gauff won a second Grand Slam singles title on Saturday at her favorite tournament, beating No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka 6-7, 6-2, 6-4 to take home the French Open title she has long desired. And Gauff earned it the only way she could have: With her mind, with her desire, with her steadiness and her willingness to get down and dirty in the red clay of Roland Garros.
It is a surface that rewards all the qualities Gauff brings to the table, and on a windy day in Paris, she did what she does best. She dragged a Grand Slam final into the mud, made it a battle of attrition and a test of patience, and came out the other side with a few streaks of terre battue on her back and a big silver trophy in her arms.
The last year in women’s tennis has been largely about Sabalenka’s evolution into a complete player and the otherworldly power of her strokes. But this match? It wasn’t just about the forehands and the backhands. If it were, Gauff probably wouldn’t have won.
Instead, it was about all of the intangibles: Handling nerves, preserving emotional energy, moving on from mistakes and accepting that the wind gusts and rain drops were going to make the tennis something less than perfect.
In fact, for much of the match, it was ugly.
And that’s just how Gauff likes it.
“I honestly didn’t think I could do it,” she said during the trophy ceremony. “But I’m going to quote Tyler the Creator who said, ‘If I ever told you I had a doubt inside me, I must be lying.’ I think I was lying to myself, and I definitely could do it.”
The toughest tennis players to beat are the ones who accept that they don’t need to be perfect, they only need to be a little bit better than the person on the other side of the net. Understanding that and putting it into action is Gauff’s best singular quality, along with the elite defensive speed to keep points alive and a full commitment to making her opponent come up with the goods.
It is what often saves her when the forehand breaks down, when the second serve gets shaky and when it looks like the thread she’s hanging onto is about to snap.
“She’s got an incredible ability to fight,” her father, Corey Gauff, said on TNT. “That’s her best quality. She never gives up no matter the scoreline. Because it looked pretty bleak in the first set and she pulled it together and kept fighting.”
Indeed, the Sabalenka onslaught came early. She led 4-1, 40-love, and it looked like the first set was gone. But Gauff didn’t mentally concede, reeled it back to even, and then actually blew an opportunity to pull it out in the tiebreaker.
Having that effort go unrewarded would have broken a lot of players. Not Gauff.
The longer the match went, the longer the points went and the more the wind blew, you could feel Sabalenka’s discomfort and frustration growing. At the same time, you could see Gauff’s inner calm prevail. It started to look a lot like the 2023 US Open final, when Gauff got Sabalenka to emotionally detonate in a 2-6, 6-3, 6-2 win.
Sabalenka didn’t handle it much better this time. As Gauff scrambled to keep points alive, Sabalenka pressed to end them – often much too hard, pulling her brain and her body into a self-destructive cycle of mistakes, followed by frustration, leading to more mistakes. Ultimately, the unforced error count told the story: Sabalenka 70, Gauff 30. The steadier player won the day.
Sabalenka’s emotions came out in all the wrong ways, not just on the court but at the trophy ceremony when she issued a half-apology, half-whine about the “terrible tennis” and the “terrible conditions.”
Sorry, but that’s how sports work and why they fascinate us endlessly. When everything is perfect, Sabalenka is a better tennis player than Gauff more times than not. But the true mark of greatness in tennis is accepting that every day will bring a different challenge, including from Mother Nature, and being able to adapt to the reality that confronts you.
Even with two Grand Slam titles at such a young age, Gauff still has a lot of growth to pursue in what she can do with a tennis ball. But if she can get to this stage of a big tournament, where so often the mental side becomes just as important as the physical, Gauff has proven once again that she’s already a giant.