"Something I'll definitely tell my kids": Coco Gauff recalls snubbing Carlos Alcaraz for Rafael Nadal in 'emotional' anecdote

With Rafael Nadal retiring next month at the Davis Cup Finals, the tributes continue to flood in and Coco Gauff was one of the latest to speak about his legacy.

Reaching the semi-finals in Wuhan, she has grown up watching Nadal and latterly playing on tour alongside him and it is something that she looks back on with great fondness and emotion.

“Yeah, he was or is my favourite person to watch. These retirements, we talk about like they're dead,” she smiled.

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“But he is my favourite person to watch practice honestly. The intensity that he brought on the practice court and obviously on the match court is something that I felt like watching is unmatched.”

“Watching the video, [I was] a bit emotional because Rafa is all I've known growing up. Yeah, he's all I've known. Pretty sure he's won Roland Garros for like the majority of my life.”

“Yeah, I guess it's something that's unfortunate. It's going to happen to everybody one day. Hopefully it was completely on his terms. I know maybe this year he didn't have as many injury-free moments as he wanted to.

“Overall, the career he had is something that players and people dream of,” she added.

"Off the court he was always speaking to me, always saying congratulations to me whenever I did well. It's something that is very rare when you come across top players, especially when they're not on the women's side, maybe on the men's side. I don't know, I just felt things he would do, he went out of his way.

“I remember at one point he said congratulations to me the year I went to the finals of the French Open. I kind of did a double take because I couldn't believe he was speaking to me.”

She also recalled the time that she tried her best to trade pins with him and Alcaraz got in the way so she snubbed the future Spanish king for the current one.

“Actually, I don't think I posted the picture, but this we traded pins at the Olympics, which is the one thing I wanted to do,” she explained.

“He was super nice with that. We were both waiting on the shuttle. It was the last shuttle of the day, like 11pm. I asked him if I could have one of his pins. He gave me one. Carlos was there, too, but Carlos didn't have any pins. I only took the picture with Rafa there.

“I was like, ‘Carlos, you can't be in it because you didn't give me a pin.’ Yeah, just something like that I'll remember. And something I'll definitely tell my kids because it meant a lot to me.”

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