
Following her maiden clay-court title win at the Emilia-Romagna Open this past weekend, Coco Gauff has had a change of heart regarding her love for the red dirt.
The American impressed the tennis world, as she ran through her competition to claim the title in Parma. Losing only one set en route to the title, the 17-year old also claimed the doubles trophy, becoming the youngest woman to sweep the singles and doubles titles at a WTA event since Maria Sharapova at 2004 Birmingham.
"It's not a surface that people associate me with, so it feels good," Gauff told reporters after her title win. "I like the dirt now. I always talk about how I don't like it, but I like it now."
"Clay shows you a little extra love than the other surfaces do. It's just going home, taking a shower, and I have clay coming out of me from all different places, or clay still in my clothes from weeks later. So that's the only thing I don't like about it. But obviously, performance-wise I do well on it."
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As a result of her title win, Gauff rose to a career-high ranking of World No.25 on Monday. This ensures that she will be seeded at the upcoming Roland Garros, making it the first time she's seeded at a Grand Slam event in her career.
"I feel really good about going into the French," Gauff revealed. "I hope I can continue to build and keep getting better. I have a week and a day to get ready. I feel like I'm hitting good, moving good, my body feels good, my mentality and emotionally I feel good. So I think it will be a good tournament for me."
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Growing up in a household where soccer was king, my earliest memories are filled with chants from packed stadiums and the rhythm of a ball being passed across neighborhood streets. But somewhere along the way, the quiet elegance and raw emotion of tennis pulled me in. What began as a curiosity became a lifelong passion; not just for the sport itself, but for the stories it tells: of grit, of heartbreak, of improbable comebacks and human resilience.
As a tennis writer, I bring the observational lens of someone who didn’t grow up in the sport, but fell in love with it as an outsider; a perspective that lets me see both its technical beauty and its emotional depth. Over the years working with TennisUpToDate, I’ve had the privilege of reaching more than 3.5 million readers worldwide, with one of my features ranking among the site’s top three articles.
With a background in storytelling and a creative mind always searching for meaning beyond the scoreboard, I aim to craft narratives that go deeper than results and rankings. Whether it’s a rising star breaking through or a veteran fighting off Father Time, I try to capture the heartbeat behind the headlines.
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