Coco Gauff recently reflected on people criticizing her off-court moves, including doing photoshoots.
The world is a vast place full of many types of people and opinions. The power of the internet made it so that seemingly everybody has an opinion, and it's mostly tied to famous people or professional athletes.
Tennis players, as public figures, have it as bad as anybody in the public eye because the criticism is constant. Nobody knows that better than Gauff, who has seen various types of criticisms over the years.
She was a 'failure' until she won the US Open last year, and now she's seemingly not dedicated enough to tennis. We saw the same narratives with Emma Raducanu after she started to branch out following her tennis rise.
Gauff, like many players, has hobbies and interests outside of the sport, but that's not good enough for some people. Like Raducanu, she was also criticized for doing photoshoots.
"A lot of people like to criticize that. A lot of people like to say, maybe if I lose they'll say, She needs to focus on her tennis instead of doing this, doing even shoots and stuff."
"I always contemplated having A Day in My Life so people could see what I'm doing. I'm practicing three or four hours in the morning, then doing the shoot."
Even though she has many hobbies and interests, tennis will always be the number one priority for her. Obviously, there is life to be lived away from the tennis courts, so when she's away from the courts, she's like anybody else.
"Obviously tennis is the main priority. Once I step off the court, I'm a person. I'm not hitting strokes while I'm eating food and everything. I'm actually thinking. I'm a person. I have opinions. I have thoughts. I feel like I have a responsibility with the platform tennis has given me to not use it in vain, so yeah."
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