“For a period of time she was unhappy”: How Coco Gauff’s parents helped her through loneliness, self-doubt and tears

Coco Gauff’s parents helped her through loneliness, self-doubt and tears(Image via Getty Images)

Coco Gauff’s early success came with a side most fans never saw. At 13, the young tennis player started questioning her future in the sport. She felt lonely at tournaments, missed parts of a normal teenage life and even thought about taking a year away from tennis.

Her parents, Corey and Candi Gauff, noticed the change and found different ways to support her.

Gauff reached the 2017 US Open junior final at 13, becoming the youngest girls’ singles finalist in the tournament’s history. But the attention around her success also made junior tournaments harder.Candi Gauff said some older players became distant after Coco started winning.“That led to loneliness at the tournaments, which leads to sadness, so for a period of time she was unhappy,” Candi told The New York Times in April 2020.Gauff had also been homeschooled since third grade. When she joined social media at 13, she saw teenagers sharing pictures from high school events and started thinking about the life she was missing.“You are seeing other kids posting photos of going to these high school events, and you’re wondering what would life be like if I didn’t play tennis,” Candi said.Gauff later admitted that she sometimes wondered the same thing.

In her April 2020 Behind the Racquet post, she said she had considered taking a year off and spent time “sitting, thinking and crying.”She also explained what she eventually learned from that period. She needed to play tennis because she wanted to, not because other people expected it from her.

The situation became more visible after a loss in Bonita Springs, Florida, in May 2019. Gauff lost 6-1, 6-1 in qualifying, but the score was not what bothered her most.“It wasn’t the loss. It was how I lost,” Gauff later told ESPN.Candi saw something else. She felt Coco had stopped competing with the energy she once showed. “I don’t see no fire. I don’t see that you want to be out there,” Candi told her after the match, according to ESPN’s profile of the Gauff family.Candi told Coco she did not have to continue playing tennis if she was unhappy. But if she decided to stay, she had to give her best effort.Candi also had a direct conversation with Corey about his coaching. His strict approach had worked when Coco was younger, but she was growing into a teenager who needed more space. Corey changed how he worked with her, while other coaches, including Nick Saviano and Jean-Christophe Faurel, also helped her develop.

The difference soon showed on court. At Wimbledon in July 2019, 15-year-old Gauff came through qualifying and beat Venus Williams in the first round. She then reached the fourth round of the tournament.Months later, Gauff won her first WTA singles title in Linz, Austria, in Oct. 2019. But the biggest change had started before those results. Gauff had begun to understand what she wanted from tennis. In her 2020 reflection, she wrote that she came out of the difficult period “stronger and knowing myself better than ever.”Corey also clarified one point after Gauff's post drew attention. He told The New York Times that she had never received a clinical diagnosis of depression or treatment for depression. He described her experience as personal pressure and a difficult period in her teenage years.For Gauff, her parents did not simply push her to keep playing. They gave her the option to walk away, changed how they coached her and helped her find a reason to stay.