This Year’s U.S. Open Belongs to Coco Gauff, Win or Lose

It’s Sunday night, a bit after 6 o’clock, and Coco Gauff goes by her postmatch routine within the part of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center the place gamers heat up earlier than matches and funky down after them.

Two different stars of American tennis, Frances Tiafoe and Ben Shelton, who’re amongst her shut associates, are there, too. Tiafoe is winding down after his fourth-round U.S. Open win, which arrange his all-American quarterfinals match towards Shelton, who’s on the point of play a combined doubles match. The pleasant trash speak has begun, and Gauff can not resist being concerned. She is aware of simply easy methods to do it.

Tiafoe, who spends a whole lot of time shirtless and doesn’t lack for confidence relating to his rippling physique, and Shelton are taking part in this match in vivid sleeveless shirts. Shelton seems to be higher in his, Gauff tells Tiafoe.

And, by the way in which, so does Carlos Alcaraz, the world No. 1, who beat Tiafoe within the Open semifinals final yr and who can also be taking part in in sleeveless Technicolor. “You’re wearing confetti,” Gauff says.

Then she is off to boast that she has gotten the higher of one of many princes of the match and to make enjoyable of her 60-something coach’s penchant for Jolly Ranchers and the dad-rock tunes he retains sending her. She should additionally pose for the limitless sequence of selfies that so many, particularly Gen-Z followers, desperately need as they pay her their final praise.

“My queen,” they are saying of her.

In the quarterfinals on Tuesday, the sixth-seeded Gauff will face Twentieth-seeded Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia, who eradicated top-seeded Iga Swiatek in her earlier match. If Gauff wins, she is going to nonetheless have to search out her means by two extra pressure-packed matches to win the match. But over every week into the yr’s ultimate Grand Slam occasion, one factor has turn out to be clear: Gauff, at age 19, is the queen of this U.S. Open.

Fans hurry throughout the grounds to get to their seats in Arthur Ashe Stadium earlier than her singles matches. No one needs to overlook her first fist-pumping “Come on!” or one in every of her ball-chasing factors that go nook to nook, backcourt to internet after which again once more, and more and more finish along with her cracking an overhead smash or along with her opponent sending the ball into the web.

The first-come-first-served seats on the smaller courts with normal admission entry start to fill lengthy earlier than she and her doubles accomplice, Jessica Pegula, take the courtroom. Organizers moved their doubles match on Monday into Ashe when house freed up within the late afternoon. They gained.

The N.B.A. participant Jimmy Butler of the Miami Heat is without doubt one of the many boldface names who’ve come out for her matches. Others embrace the singer Justin Bieber and his spouse, Hailey, a mannequin and influencer. They had been in the home on Friday for Gauff’s third-round win over Elise Mertens. Butler was there, too, and returned for her fourth-round win over Caroline Wozniacki on Sunday.

Gauff’s response: “Again?”

Perhaps this was the way in which it was at all times going to go for Gauff, who at age 10 earned a coveted spot within the coaching program on the tennis academy of Patrick Mouratoglou, who coached Serena Williams.

Like anybody who noticed Gauff on the courtroom then, Mouratoglou got here away impressed along with her early pace, energy and talent to alter route instantly and make a top quality shot. He known as her into his workplace for an interview, one thing he places all of his prospects by, and requested her why she thought she might turn out to be a top-level participant. She had appeared shy on the courtroom, however now she seemed him within the eye from the start of their dialog to the top, and advised him she needed this greater than another woman.

Loads of gamers say that, Mouratoglou stated in an interview on Monday. He began placing her on the courtroom in matches towards gamers who had been extra superior of their growth than she was. More typically than not, she discovered a strategy to win.

At 13, she made the ultimate of the U.S. Open junior match. At 15, she beat Venus Williams on Centre Court at Wimbledon and made the fourth spherical.

“She is ready for greatness,” Mouratoglou stated. “Of course, she feels the pressure like everybody does, but the difference comes from having the belief that you belong there, that you are supposed to do well, that you may be in the spotlight but you enjoy having that pressure, pressure that she has had since she was a kid.”

Living beneath that scrutiny, particularly when early success arrives, can have its benefits and disadvantages. Women’s tennis in the course of the previous decade is replete with gamers who gained a Grand Slam occasion of their late teenagers or early 20s, then struggled for the following yr to win three matches in a match.

During her first seasons on the tour, Gauff was impatient to succeed in the highest, given her breakthrough at Wimbledon in 2019 and her run to the French Open ultimate final yr. Before this season, although, she spent a while learning the highest 10 gamers and the latest Grand Slam match winners. She noticed that lots of them had been peaking from age 22 to 26.

She wasn’t but 19, however she was about to start her fifth season of top-level tennis. Her mom advised her to be affected person, that she didn’t have her “grown woman strength yet,” and stated she would know when she acquired it.

“I guess I’m not as mature as other players are,” she stated one afternoon in Australia. “That’s going to come with life on earth, not how many years you are on tour.”

Some might disagree with that evaluation. Three years in the past, when she was 16, Gauff took the microphone at a Black Lives Matter rally in her hometown, Delray Beach, Fla., days after the homicide of George Floyd.

“No matter how big or small your platform is, you need to use your voice,” she advised the group that day. “I saw a Dr. King quote that said, ‘The silence of the good people is worse than the brutality of the bad people.’ We need to not be silent.”

This summer time, she was one of many featured gamers on the Citi Open in Washington D.C. She had endured some disappointing ends in the earlier two months, dropping to Swiatek for the seventh consecutive time on the French Open within the quarterfinals and bowing out within the first spherical of Wimbledon.

But the position of a headliner at a midsize match comes with some duties. Mark Ein, the proprietor of the Citi Open, watched as Gauff chatted with V.I.P.s, together with a member of President Biden’s cupboard and a justice on the Supreme Court, as if it had been enterprise as traditional. Then she went out and gained the match, and Ein sensed there was one thing totally different in regards to the teenager who had first performed in his occasion in 2019.

“She gave off this sense of being in control of the situation, both on the court and off,” Ein stated. “Every once in a generation in tennis it seems there is someone who breaks through at a very early age, and the test is how you can handle it. The all-time greats seem to have a composure that lets them succeed.”

Since 2019, Gauff’s face has by no means been laborious to search out on billboards at any match the place she is taking part in. Still, her administration group at Team8, the boutique company that Roger Federer started together with his longtime agent, Tony Godsick, has tried to take a sluggish and regular strategy.

She might have offers with dozens of corporations. So far, her portfolio past the standard racket and clothes sponsors, New Balance and Head, consists of solely Rolex, Bose, Barilla, Baker Tilly and U.P.S.

Gauff nonetheless typically rocks backwards and forwards when she is talking in public. She will giggle at herself in the midst of a sentence. She continues to be over a yr away from ordering a drink legally within the United States.

If she loses to Ostapenko on Tuesday or to another person within the days forward, time will nonetheless be on her aspect for an extended whereas. But in some ways, her time has arrived.