"Not her soft launching during the press conference" - Tennis fans react to Coco Gauff's comment about her 'boyfriend' following US Open win
Coco Gauff clinched her maiden Grand Slam at the 2023 US Open on Saturday, September 9, with the home crowd cheering her on at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
Gauff came from behind to defeat World No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka 2-6, 6-3, 6-2 in an intense showdown at Flushing Meadows. The 19-year-old has become only the third American teenager, after Tracy Austin (1979) and Serena Williams (1999), to win the US Open.
While addressing the media after her victory over Sabalenka, Coco Gauff dropped a hint about her boyfriend. She said:
“Last night, I started a little bit, but honestly, I just called my boyfriend, and I told him let's talk until it's time to go to sleep so we spoke until 1:00 a.m. and then I went to sleep."
Gauff's comments sent her fans on social media into a frenzy. One fan on X (formerly Twitter) claimed that Gauff was "softly launching" her boyfriend during the press conference.
"Not her soft launching during the press conference," the fan's tweet read.
One fan jokingly wondered if her boyfriend could be Carlos Alcaraz.
“Can you imagine if she decides to go public with her bf……… and we find out it’s Carlos Alcaraz,” they wrote.
Another fan wished for Coco Gauff’s boyfriend not to be a public figure, but a regular person.
“Istg it better be some random a**udude no one’s ever heard of. No rapper, no tennis player, NOTHING,” the fan wrote.
Here are few more reactions from tennis fans:
Coco Gauff - “I’m an argumentative person”
Coco Gauff had received a lot of criticism after her loss in the 2023 French Open quarterfinals against Iga Swiatek and her first-round exit at Wimbledon. However, she has since risen to the occasion and claimed titles in Washington, Cincinnati and New York.
In her press interview following her US Open win, Coco Gauff said she was taking both criticism and appreciation in her stride. However, she added that she wouldn’t overlook all the trolling since she was quite a stubborn and argumentative individual.
"Yeah, I have just been embracing every positive and negative thing that's said about me," Gauff said. "I realize, you know, sometimes people have different personalities and some people need to shut off the comments and not look at them. But I'm an argumentative person. I'm very stubborn. My parents know. If they tell me one thing, I like to do the other."
Gauff added that she was going through the comments right before her match, which fueled her to go out and get the win.
"So I really told myself, literally up until, like, 10 minutes before the match, I was just reading comments of people saying I wasn't going to win today. That just put the fire in me," she said.