Since signing with New Balance in 2018 at the age of 14 Coco Gauff has broken many firsts Source: Coco Gauff
Without Althea there would be no Venus and Serena. Without Venus and Serena there would be no Coco Gauff. Without Black women fighting to compete in a sport traditionally built for higher income families capable of affording coaches and private training, yesterday’s victory in the U.S. Open wouldn’t have been a historical event following in the footsteps of Serena being the youngest American teen to win the major. That’s the easy storyline. Since this is a sneaker led site, what’s the sneaker storyline?
Serena Williams has the biggest building on Nike’s Oregon campus. She has a design team dedicated to the creation of apparel and footwear at Nike. The Swoosh obviously supports the athlete in a considerable fashion, but Coco Gauff’s career will always be judged by how she measures up to Serena. In a way, Coco is LeBron chasing the ghost of Michael Jordan. Serena owns 23 Grand Slam titles, the Jordan number. Coco has an incredibly tall mountain to climb by comparison, but placing this weight on the shoulders of the young athlete isn’t fair and interestingly Gauff’s decision to sign with New Balance at 14 made her fearlessly independent.
Consider the sneaker aspect of her career against her peers. Serena is a Nike athlete. Naomi Osaka left adidas to sign with Nike. Sloane Stephens left Under Armour to sign with Nike. Not one of these women has a signature sneaker bearing their names. Coco Gauff won her first grand slam wearing her own sneaker, the Coco 1. Serena has sneakers designed for her, a building named for her, but none of her accomplishments happened in a signature sneaker with her name in the title:
New Balance and Coco Gauff just accomplished something no other brand has done with a Black woman tennis player. According to Tip Nunn with the Billie Jean King website, “BJK wore her signature adidas shoe in her 1974 US Open championship,” making her the first, but Coco is the only Black woman to accomplish this feat. Coco’s victory isn’t chasing the GOAT. It’s a sign that an athlete can create their own history and pen the story of their career and she did so without following. She didn’t leave another brand and sign with the Swoosh. Gauff signed with New Balance when the brand didn’t have any other women’s tennis players under contract, at 14 years old. She cried on court and took hard lessons from Naomi Osaka. She rallied, slid across clay courts and grass, screamed at refs, fought against fatigue and setbacks and on a historical day, this young athlete won her first major in a sneaker bearing her name. “Gauff is now the youngest American to win the US Open since Serena Williams in 1999 and the fourth teenage American in the Open era to win the home Slam. And she did so on the anniversary of both Arthur Ashe’s breakthrough US Open victory in 1968 and Venus Williams’ maiden title at the event in 2000.” D’Arcy Maine
Check out this informative article on tennis and signature sneakers by Tim Newcomb: The Complete History Of Signature Shoes In Tennis (forbes.com)