Coco Gauff broke out in quite a spectacular manner, beating Venus Williams at Wimbledon as a 15-year-old.
The American grew up idolizing the Williams sisters for obvious reasons. They were huge tennis superstars when she was growing up, and with their success, Gauff easily found the motivation to do the same.
Playing one of them was a dream come true. The story about that match is rather well known, but Gauff retold it to Vogue Magazine in a recent interview as part of their special feature with her.
She admitted to doing anything and everything to avoid realizing that she was playing Venus Williams. She just wanted to remain focused on the tennis part and not really on what was happening around her because there was a lot of talk about storylines and tennis history.
"When I walked on the court, I put the music really loud in my ears because I didn’t want to look at, or hear, the crowd. A lot of times during that match I didn’t even look at the scoreboard because I didn’t want to see her name."
Playing Venus Williams was a huge privilege for Gauff, who played and bested her twice. She never played against Serena Williams, which is unfortunate, but she wouldn't have wanted to face Serena at Wimbledon when she was 15.
She frankly admitted that she wasn't ready for that, and maybe if she played the 23-time Grand Slam champion, her story would have unfolded much differently than we know it today.
"If I had the perfect world I would have gotten to play both, but Serena retired and I played Venus twice. In my perfect world I would have played Venus once and Serena once. Playing Serena at Wimbledon, I don’t know, I feel like it would have messed up my story. I wasn’t ready for Serena at that time."
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