Coco Gauff bids farewell to her teen years, fondly looks back on her achievements after Indian Wells 3R win
Coco Gauff capped her competitive teen years off with an impressive victory over Lucia Bronzetti in the third round of the Indian Wells 2024.
Gauff defeated Bronzetti 6-2, 7-6(5) on Sunday, March 10, by converting three out of the seven break points she earned on the Italian's serve. Also, she thwarted ten out of the eleven attempts that Bronzetti made to break her serve to advance.
She is scheduled to play against Belgium's Elise Mertens on Wednesday, March 13, which interestingly happens to be her 20th birthday.
As a teenager, Gauff achieved remarkable success. She made her debut in the WTA Tour in 2018 and announced herself to the tennis world the following year by making it to the fourth round of Wimbledon as a qualifier. She notably lost to eventual champion Simona Halep.
The American further solidified her stature on the women's circuit by ending second-best to Iga Swiatek at the French Open 2022.
Coco Gauff truly arrived on the big stage in 2023 by winning her first WTA 500 title at the Citi Open and her first WTA 1000 trophy at the Cincinnati Open. She backed the two victories by triumphing at the US Open, staging a comeback win over Aryna Sabalenka in the final and reaching a career-high ranking of World No. 3.
After her win over Bronzetti at Indian Wells on Sunday, Gauff took to Instagram to look back on the amazing career she has had so far.
"Byeeee 20 soon," she wrote.
Coco Gauff suggests winning a Grand Slam was "the only time-constraint goal I had put on myself"
During her post-match press conference after the win over Lucia Bronzetti at Indian Wells 2024, Coco Gauff suggested that she had vowed to win a Grand Slam as a teenager. She said:
"It's good when you accomplish a goal that's so big. I think that was the only time-constraint goal I had put on myself because especially with Slams, there's only four of them. It's tough to win one.
"It's not something that you can just do, like, it's not like a 250 or 500 or something you have every week to play. I think that was just one of the main things for me was to try to do that."
Gauff further stated that she would no longer set time-constraint objectives for herself.
"I guess now looking at what's next, 20 is a long time to play. So I don't have any time-constraint goals anymore on myself," she added.