Coco Gauff nearly gave up tennis before amassing huge net worth in prize money

Coco Gauff confuses Sue Barker with ‘Chewbacca’

It takes a special player to beat Venus Williams at Wimbledon but an even greater one to do it at the age of 15. Coco Gauff achieved that remarkable feat in 2019, defeating the former world No 1 and five-time Wimbledon champion in straight sets, immediately elevating her to tennis super-stardom.

Now, 19, the Atlanta-born teenager has packed a lot into her relatively short career already. With three career titles to her name, she has ranked as high as No 4 in the world in singles and is a former No 1 in doubles, where she has already won eight titles. Not bad work for someone who isn’t even old enough to legally drink alcohol in her own country yet.

Gauff will arrive at Wimbledon next week as world No 6 in search of her maiden grand slam title and few would bet against her going deep in the competition.

As ever, she will be supported by her doting parents, who both come from sporting backgrounds but gave up their own careers to focus on the journey of their oldest child of three.

Dad Corey was a basketball player at Georgia State, while her mother, Candi, was a hurdler and heptathlete for Florida State. Corey left his job as a healthcare executive to coach Coco full-time, while Candi used her background as an educator to home-school her prodigious daughter from the age of 13.

In an interview with the Sun Sentinal, Corey joked that this decision had turned them from a “single-income family” to a “no-income family.”

Focusing on Gauff’s emerging tennis career was justified by her phenomenal results in junior tennis, where she is a former world No. 1. After making the semi-finals of the prestigious Les Petits As 14-and-under tournament at the age of 12, she began playing on the ITF Junior Circuit at 13, going straight in at the highest level Grade A and Grade 1 tournaments.

She made her Junior Grand Slam debut at the US Open in 2017 and finished as runner-up. A year later she won her first Junior Slam at the French Open.

After joining the ITF Women’s Circuit in 2018 she received a wild card entry into the US Open aged just 14. But it was at Wimbledon a year later that she emerged as the hottest new name in tennis. After becoming the youngest-ever qualifier to reach the main draw at 15 – beating the top seed in the process – Gauff stunned tennis by defeating Williams in straight sets.

Her incredibly rapid rise to the top of the women’s game was not without distress, however, with low mood almost ending Gauff’s tennis career before it had even properly got started.

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In a candid post for the tennis series ‘Behind the Racquet’, a 16-year-old Gauff lifted the lid on her difficulties dealing with early success, the expectations put on her and her own feelings about tennis.

She said: “Throughout my life, I was always the youngest to do things, which added hype that I didn’t want. It added this pressure that I needed to do well fast. Once I let that all go, that’s when I started to have the results I wanted.”

“Going back to around 2017-18, I was struggling to figure out if this was really what I wanted. I always had the results, so that wasn’t the issue. I just found myself not enjoying what I loved. I realised I needed to start playing for myself and not other people. For about a year I was really depressed. That was the toughest year for me so far.”

After the press picked up on the word ‘depressed’, Gauff’s father Corey was quick to play it down and add more context to the situation.

He said: “She was never clinically depressed, never diagnosed with depression, never seen anybody about depression. There’s no medicine going on. This is a kid’s personal pressure that they put on themselves and how they deal with it and how they mature.”

Coco Gauff’s requirement to handle pressure and expectation can perhaps be explained by the fact that her father told her at the age of eight that she could be the “greatest” in the sport.

But fast forward to 2023 and the teenager’s standing in the women’s game is continuing to blossom. According to First Sportz, Gauff now has a net worth of around £7.8m. Her career earnings of £5.7m to date are supplemented by endorsement deals with New Balance, Head and Italian food brand Barilla.

Still living at home with her parents in Atlanta, Georgia, Gauff doesn’t currently have a boyfriend, as she keeps all the focus on her tennis career. She has already made a name for herself at Wimbledon, but 2023 could be the year that she delivers her first Grand Slam, still as a teenager.

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