The 15-year-old Coco Gauff is one of the youngest players to have qualified for the Wimbledon championships in the Open Era with a straight win over the Belgian, Greet Minnen with a 6-1 6-1 win. The first appearance of Gauff on the Wimbledon’s grass court in the junior tournaments was last year when she could only make it to the quarterfinals. This year when she was asked before the match about her experience, she revealed that she was familiar with the grounds at the Wimbledon. She had also won the French Open girls championships.
Is Coco the new Serena Williams?
But winning the Grand Slam qualifying match in the French Open at her age is the most amazing feat that has happened after a long time in women’s tennis after the Williams sisters. Gauff draws her inspiration from the William sisters. She is much inspired by Serena Williams, she says: “I think my first memory was watching Serena play Wimbledon.”
Gauff received the entry into the qualifying draw via wild card and defeated the No.1 seed Aliona Bolsova Zadoinov who had formerly reached the fourth round at the Roland Garros. Gauff had the upper hand as Bolsova lacked much experience in grass courts and Gauff took full advantage of that. The second round of qualifying game versus the Russian, Valentyna Ivankhnenko was the display of Gauff’s power game where she won 93% of her points in service and didn’t have to face a single break point in the whole match.
She has climbed the WTA rankings from 874 to 301 in just 8 months. In 2017, after winning the US Open junior Final, the then 13-year-old Gauff had said: “Overall, I want to be the best I can be and the greatest”. If Gauff wins the Wimbledon this year, she would be the youngest ever, although another 15 years old woman won the championship which happened almost a century ago.
IS SHE THE NEW SERENA WILLIAMS?
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