This was not Coco Gauff’s season! She started the 2024 season on the backdrop of a US Open title win, with a hope of adding at least one more to her kit. However, all hopes were dashed when she made semifinal exits at the Australian and French Open. In addition to the premature exit from the Olympics, Emma Navarro crushed her hopes at the Wimbledon championships and the US Open. All this has drawn the negative ire of tennis fans from around the world for the 20-year-old. With Iga Swiatek’s well-wisher even calling the World No.3 “a spoiled princess.”

On September 1, defending champion Coco Gauff’s title defense ended in the U.S. Open’s fourth round with a 6-3, 4-6, 6-3 loss to Emma Navarro. The following day, Dominik Senkowski, a reporter at sport.pl, tweeted, “I feel a little sorry for Coco Gauff, because she started achieving success when she was very young, and today she can’t really achieve it. This pressure has become incredibly intense and many in her position would have similar or greater problems. But at the same time, the message from her and those around her is sometimes a besieged fortress.(Translated from Polish)”

As a response to it, the bureaucrat from Poland, Anna Zofia Niezgodzka, wrote, “I am shocked by one thing – how a mega nice and resourceful girl on the court turned into a tennis player who makes dramas, behaving like a spoiled princess. What’s worse, the team and family do not help. Mom was able to laugh at the mistakes of Coco’s opponent during one of the matches(Translated from Polish)”– she said.

These words from the prominent figure certainly weigh more than the words of a random critic. But this also leads us to the question: is Coco Gauff unable to handle the pressure that comes with success? Maybe yes, back in 2020, her mother had come out in support of her daughter as she made a mention of depression.

Coco Gauff: her early battles with depression and pressure while enjoying tennis

Niezgodzka said her parents and team are not helping the 20-year-old through the pressure. However, her parents came out in support in 2020, when she was just 16 years old, and made her mark on the tennis court. During an interview, Gauff opened up about her struggles of “always the youngest to do things, which added hype” that she didn’t want.

Her debut match brought her to the center of the circuit. Everyone looked for Gauff during the matches, hoping she would make another miracle! However, this all led to increased pressure on the then-teenager. She further said, “Going back to around 2017-18, I was struggling to figure out if this was really what I wanted…I realized I needed to start playing for myself and not for other people. For about a year, I was really depressed. That was the toughest year for me so far.”

These words acted as an alarming bell for her parents. And her father responded positively as he stood firm with his daughter. Though Gauff was not clinically depressed in the words of her father: “This is a kid’s personal pressure that they put on themselves. And how they deal with it and how they mature.”

Both Swiatek and Gauff have been on the receiving end of the tennis fans now and then. But it’s rare for a prominent figure to either support or criticize a player. And some time back, Niezgodzka, supported Swiatek’s US Open outfit when it drew ire of tennis fans. And, every support matters when it comes to facing the world. Maybe Coco Gauff is maturing into a strong player, as she figures out the ropes around the circuit.