Gauff’s Olympic lessons? Inspiration and perspective

One way or another, Coco Gauff was going to find herself at an Olympics. The 20-year-old US Open champion says she could have seen herself racing around the track if she had not chosen tennis over athletics.

“I don’t know if I would have been as good as I was in tennis in track, but I strongly feel like if I would have trained I could have been an Olympian,” Gauff said at the National Bank Open. “Track is the only sport I would say that in just because I did do well in middle school like never training, I didn’t go to one track practice, and I won all my races except two, and both were against the same girl and she was in 8th grade.”

Gauff, whose mother ran track at Florida State, probably would have pursued one of the toughest events in the sport: the 400m.

“Noah Lyles said he saw me as like a 400 hurdler, but I’m like kind of scared of hurdles, so, yeah, I don’t think I would have been like that,” Gauff said. “But definitely 400 or longer would have been my thing.

“Sometimes I’m like, what could have happened? I even talked to my dad about putting me in some local track meets in the off-season, just for the fun of it, just to see where I could go.”

Despite falling short of a goal she set for herself in 2024 and failing to medal in any of the three events she entered, World No.2 Gauff says her first Olympic experience was nothing short of inspiring — and has left her with a healthy dose of perspective.

Between being given the honor of being Team USA’s female flagbearer at the opening ceremony, and staying in the Olympic village, Gauff found herself with the opportunity to mix and mingle with more than a few elite American athletes in Paris. In her time at the Games, she built up a rapport with track and field stars Tara Davis-Woodhall, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, Sha’carri Richardson and Gabby Thomas — one that continued even after she left France and arrived in Canada for this week’s National Bank Open.

Toronto: Scores | Draws | Order of Play

The foursome, all of whom are between the ages of 24 and 27, each overcame mental and physical challenges in the last Olympic cycle to put themselves on the medal stand this time around — and Gauff says she hopes to see a similar arc in her own career. As the No.2 seed at the Olympics, Gauff was upset in the third round by eventual silver medalist Donna Vekic, and lost in the second round and quarterfinals in women’s and mixed doubles, respectively.

“It does inspire me, and just also it puts perspective to my age,” she said Thursday after a 6-4, 6-4 opening win over China’s Wang Yafan in Toronto. “A lot of them are 24, between 24 to 27 range … I think I just learned to just trust in my training and trust in the journey, just with talking with them and learning about their stories.

“Sometimes when you do well young you just want everything to happen now. All of them at some point did well young, just because they’re so good, but I just learned to trust the journey and trust maturity and just your game is going to reach its final form in a few years.”

“I’m 20, so hopefully by, like, 24 I’m there,” she added with a laugh.

As she moves into the next phase of her own athletic career, readying to defend her US Open title later this month, Gauff says having candid conversations with athletes of different backgrounds helped her learn an important lesson about tennis.

“The thing is that, I guess, when you have success young, I think people, especially fans of the sport tend to forget you’re still developing,” Gauff continued. “No sport, maybe except gymnastics where you’re really reaching your peak at like 20 years old, I think that’s probably one of the few. This last Olympics showed us that that’s also not true, with all the ages of some of the gold medalists, and obviously Simone Biles.

“I think a lot of times tennis fans kind of forget that when they see somebody do well, and they forget that that person is developing. It’s great that not just me, but other girls are doing well so fast, but I think we also have to give grace on us because we’re still becoming a better player. A lot of times when, in the past, when you look at reasons why some younger girls maybe don’t do as well as they get older it’s more mental, if anything, not because they physically can’t handle it.

“I think overall I’m just trying to put that in perspective, and honestly the Olympics was a great learning experience for me, and it really showed me that perspective a lot.”