Gauff’s season comes full circle with late-night Riyadh win

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Sometimes you just want to tell Coco Gauff to slow down.

After a three-hour battle to secure the WTA Finals title over Zheng Qinwen, the Riyadh champion is racing through media rounds, hoping to make her 2:45 a.m. flight home.

But that’s life in the fast lane for Gauff. Late Saturday night, she joined the WTA Insider Podcast from the backseat of the car on her way to her champion’s photo shoot. Five years after making her debut as a 15-year-old on the Hologic WTA Tour, Gauff now owns at least one title at every tour level.

Though the 2023 US Open is still her career highlight, her ability to add a pair of WTA 1000 titles, a WTA 500, three WTA 250s and now a WTA Finals shows she’s thriving. She joins Iga Swiatek as the only active players under 30 to complete wins at every level.

To quote Novak Djokovic’s famous press conference quip: “Not too bad.”

“I remember after my loss in Cincinnati, they have the TV on Tennis Channel in the locker room,” Gauff said. “I couldn’t hear what what they were saying but the headline was like ‘Gauff’s Slump Summer’ or something like that.

“I looked at that and I was just like, ‘Dang, I have to turn it around somehow.’ And then I lost a pretty tough match against Emma [Navarro] at US Open. A lot of people were critiquing my season, you know, ‘Flop era.’ I know all the Twitter terms.

“I think for me it was just motivation. I’m the author of my own story, and I’m not going to let anybody write me off.”

Gauff’s ability to channel every challenge has propelled her forward. She internalizes it all and then, like the shonen anime characters she loves, redirects that energy toward victory.

She famously thanked her haters after winning the US Open last year. This year, she saw the comments ahead of her match against Swiatek in the group stage predicting a beatdown. She came away with a straight-sets win.