Coco Gauff Recalls Best Advice From Serena Williams

Coco Gauff is still chasing the high associated with winning, but chasing perfection may be the 19-year-old’s downfall.

In her new Vogue cover story, Gauff revealed the advice—given to her by Serena Williams—that helped balance out her desire to be perfect and win.

“It was just kind of like: ‘Focus on your growth and your own rate of success, not other people’s,’” Gauff recalled.

When she faced off against Venus Williams at Wimbledon and won, Gauff was only 15 and was admittedly intimidated. “When I walked on the court, I put the music really loud in my ears because I didn’t want to look at, or hear, the crowd. A lot of times during that match I didn’t even look at the scoreboard because I didn’t want to see her name,” she reflected.

She was grateful that Venus was her opponent though, instead of Serena. Gauff felt that she “wasn’t ready for Serena at that time.” Adding, “Playing Serena at Wimbledon, I don’t know, I feel like it would have messed up my story.”

However, she does wish that she had the chance to play both Venus and Serena. “If I had the perfect world I would have gotten to play both, but Serena retired and I played Venus twice. In my perfect world I would have played Venus once and Serena once.”

In regards to perfectionism, her coach Brad Gilbert called it Gauff’s “kryptonite.”

He shared, “I told her, ‘The pursuit of perfection doesn’t exist. It makes you miserable, chasing it. And you’re never satisfied with being good.’ […] This whole being-better-than-you-need-to-be costs you a lot of matches.” For Gauff, she confessed that it’s a work in progress, noting, “I’m trying to do more of, you know, accepting the good shots and giving myself as much of a compliment as I do a critique.”

These days, instead of focusing so much on winning and being perfect, she’s focusing on the “bigger plans” God has in store. Gauff still has plans to win the US Open, Wimbledon, or snag a medal at the Olympics.