It’s time for American sports fans – even American tennis fans – to stop taking Coco Gauff for granted.
On some level, that’s a crazy sentence to write. For two straight years, she has been the highest-paid women’s athlete in the world, earning $21 million in endorsements alone in 2024, according to Sportico, even though she’s never been ranked No. 1 in the world. Nor has she ever been viewed like Caitlin Clark as a singular breakthrough figure taking her sport to new heights.
You could even argue Gauff has been a bit overvalued relative to her lone Grand Slam title at the 2023 US Open. If the theory behind Gauff’s marketability and potential to transcend her sport in American culture was that she could succeed the throne of Serena Williams, it’s a bet that has not – and may never – come close to paying off.
And yet, shouldn’t it be a bigger deal that she’s going to play in yet another Grand Slam final on Saturday, trying to win the French Open at just 21 years old?
The problem with being The Chosen One in sports is that there’s rarely much of a payoff that exceeds the intoxication of possibility. LeBron James and Tiger Woods may be the only two American athletes in history who have ever truly conquered the bar that was set for them as teenage prodigies.
