Coco Gauff has addressed her haters once again as she made a winning start in Beijing. The world No 3 is playing in her first tournament since winning the US Open, when she took the opportunity to thank her doubters for driving her to win a Grand Slam title. And the American addressed those who sent her negative comments again, revealing that she wasn’t allowed to respond online.
Gauff extended her winning streak to 13 matches on Monday as she defeated Ekaterina Alexandrova in the first round of the China Open. It was her first time taking to the court as a Grand Slam champion after lifting the US Open trophy last month.
During her victory speech in Flushing Meadows, the 19-year-old made waves when she thanked those who had doubted her for inspiring her first Grand Slam win. She later revealed that she had been on ‘tennis Twitter’ ahead of the final, reading negative comments to fuel her.
And Gauff has now admitted that it wasn’t a one-off for the US Open as she often gets inspired by people sending her hate online. “I feel like my brain just works different,” the world No 3 said in Beijing, addressing the criticism she received on social media.
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“I still have the filters on my Instagram. I don’t see anything. I see the comments. I used to not be on Twitter at all. I’m still really not on Twitter much. But sometimes you get caught up in the scroll. The way the page is, the accounts that you interact with, you see yourself. I interact with tennis a lot obviously, so those tweets come up. Obviously I see about myself, positive and negative.”
Addressing the hate she received, Gauff clarified that it wasn’t welcome but she was still motivated to prove the naysayers wrong. She continued: “I wouldn’t say negativity is something that’s welcome. It’s more, I don’t know, something that I draw inspiration from. I wouldn’t recommend everybody to do that.”
“Most of the time it’s negative things, but it’s not like life-threatening things. Some of those comments can get out of hand. But for the most part, I don’t know, it’s weird, maybe I feed from negativity. That’s weird. A lot of players don’t like it. For me, I’m very stubborn. I like to argue. I like to prove people wrong.”
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But the teenager wasn’t able to respond online so she chose to do the talking elsewhere – on the tennis court. “My agent and my team advise not to comment back, so I use my racket to do it,” she added.
Gauff did manage to comment on the biggest stage – Arthur Ashe Stadium following her US Open title win. “Thank you to the people who didn’t believe in me,” she said during her speech “Like a month ago, I won a 500 title and people said I would stop at that.
“Two weeks ago I won a 1000 title and people were saying that was the biggest I was going to get. So three weeks later, I’m here with this trophy right now. I tried my best to carry this with grace and I’ve been doing my best. So, honestly, to those who thought they were putting water on my fire, you’re really adding gas to it. And now I’m really burning so bright right now.”
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