Australian Open: Coco Gauff accepts pressure, eases into Rd 2

The 18-year-old American is ready to accept pressure as she emerges from Serena Williams’ shadow

NEW DELHI | Updated: 16 January, 2023 7:58 pm IST

Coco Gauff (Photo Courtesy Twitter @AustralianOpen)

With the legendary 23-time major winner Serena Williams retiring, the focus on US women’s tennis is now on teen prodigy Coco Gauff.

The 18-year-old acknowledges that the limelight will be on her as she will have to at least match the expectations that Williams had given for so many years.

“You know, Serena is retired now, but she was always the American that people looked to,” Gauff told the Australian Open website after her first-round 6-1, 6-4 win against Katerina Siniakova.

Gauff, who reached the fourth round on her Melbourne Park debut three years ago, joked that the bar set by the Williams sisters was so high that no comparison was justified at this stage.

“I feel like what Serena and Venus have done is still at another level… It’s very hard to, I guess, put myself in that position of feeling pressure,” the seventh seed said.

“Let’s say Serena only won like two slams; then maybe I would feel it a little bit more, but I think 20-something, I don’t know, is a lot. So I’m just starting with one. I feel like Jess (Pegula) and I am just trying to start with one,” she told the website.

Gauff finds solace in the fact that she is not alone in carrying the weight of expectations. Citing the example of 2021 US Open champion Emma Raducanu, Gauff said that she understands the pressure her second-round opponent faced in the United Kingdom.

Emma Raducanu (Photo Courtesy Twitter @AustralianOpen)

“She’s gone through a lot of pressure, bursting onto the scene, I feel like it’s probably more than I have experienced coming to win a Slam,” Gauff said.

“And especially being from the UK, being the first British person to do something in a long time, I feel like it’s probably a lot more pressure than what I’m used to being an American,” Gauff said of Raducanu, who defeated German Tamara Korpatsch 6-3, 6-2 in 85 minutes.

Third seed Jessica Pegula of the United States carried her hard-court form to Melbourne, where she needed less than an hour to record a 6-0, 6-1 win over Romania’s Jaqueline Cristian.

Greece’s Maria Sakkari, the sixth seed, was basking in her “home Grand Slam” as she recorded a 6-1, 6-4 victory over China’s Yuan Yue.

The 2019 US Open champion, Bianca Andreescu, opened her third Australian Open campaign with a 6-2, 6-4 win over 25th seed Marie Bouzkova.