Coco Gauff's patient progress has her on verge of Grand Slam breakthrough at French Open | Opinion

A lot of people decided Coco Gauff was going to be special when she beat Venus Williams at Wimbledon as a 15-year old, and it wasn’t necessarily the wrong impulse. For better or worse, tennis loves its prodigies, and here were two of them — one at the beginning of the journey, the other at the end — providing a moment of symmetry and poetry that we would all remember when Gauff started lifting major trophies like Williams used to.

But in some ways, a more revealing moment for Gauff occurred last summer, long after she had been eliminated from the singles draw at the U.S. Open.

By then, the 17-year old Gauff was already kind of a veteran of the pro tour with two singles titles under her belt and a steadily improving world ranking. Her progress was obvious and consistency impressive, yet she was no longer the leading star of her generation.

In a sport as individualistic and often selfish as tennis, Emma Raducanu and Leylah Fernandez making the U.S. Open final as teenagers might have been viewed bitterly. Gauff had been the world’s most celebrated teenager as long as she had been on the scene, and yet now here were two others going to places in a Grand Slam that she had never been.

If Gauff was jealous or in any way dispirited by that turn of events, she hid it well. When Gauff said she was rooting for her peers to keep advancing, it certainly seemed like she meant it.

"We’re all different and we’re all going to have our time to shine at some point," she said. "But it definitely is inspiring because we have all been close in level for a long time and I think it shows that for me, I feel like I can make it to the semis and finals because they’re doing it."

Even more than getting to the fourth round at Wimbledon before she was eligible to play the WTA Tour full time, that kind of maturity in a potentially awkward moment for her said a lot about where Gauff knew her career was headed.

BIG WIN:Coco Gauff defeats Sloane Stephens to reach semifinals in Paris

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And now, just nine months later at this French Open, her true superstar moment is on the verge of coming to fruition.

Before the tournament began, Gauff put on a cap and gown and held her newly-earned high school diploma up in front of the Eiffel Tower. Now she’s two wins away from doing the same thing with the Coupe Suzanne Lenglen trophy, and the fact we can say that is an exciting moment for American tennis and the sport in general.

Gauff is still young enough not to put a ceiling on her career, but realistically she’s not going to win 20-plus Grand Slams and isn’t a sure thing to ever reach No. 1 in the world. There’s no way to know whether Gauff’s game will reach a level where she can be a dominant player, rather than just a very good one.

But on Tuesday, she reached a significant milestone when she beat fellow American Sloane Stephens, 7-5, 6-2, advancing to her first Grand Slam semifinal. She will face Martina Trevisan, an unseeded player from Italy, making Gauff a heavy favorite to reach Saturday’s final.

That’s already a very big deal, even if there isn’t the same type of excitement around this run as there was she won three matches as a 15-year old at Wimbledon. It’s funny how that works. Gauff had no real chance to win the title that year and, in some ways, had no idea what being a professional tennis player was all about.

Those of us who have watched the sport for a long time knew that it would not necessarily be a straight line from that breakthrough to the top of the sport. But she was a supernova arriving on the scene, which brings its own kind of excitement — and peril.

Tennis is notorious for chewing up its youngsters, either burning them out or filling them with expectations that become burdensome when unmet. Now more than ever, we’re seeing players like Naomi Osaka and Bianca Andreescu have early success and then struggle with mental health issues once they feel the expectations. Ash Barty became the world’s dominant player, won three Grand Slams and retired at age 25 just when it seemed like she was entering her prime.

What makes Gauff so fascinating is that she has never for a moment seemed like she was worried about anyone’s timetable but her own. That's a huge credit not only to her, but her parents Corey and Candi Gauff, who have carefully laid out every step in her path.

Some casual fans may have considered it a disappointment that Gauff didn’t start contending for Grand Slam titles right away or even have the one monster result like Raducanu at last year’s U.S. Open. Instead, Gauff’s story has been about incremental, year-by-year progress with the results a byproduct of becoming a more complete player. Now, she’s a consistent, week-in and week-out threat who puts in the work and hangs around the top 20 of the rankings. She doesn’t take many bad losses anymore. Her forehand isn’t as much of a weakness as it used to be, and her serve is no longer shaky under pressure. She just hasn’t had it all come together yet at a Grand Slam — until perhaps this week.

Unlike a lot of American players, Gauff is comfortable on the red clay, making the French quarterfinals last year and winning a smaller tournament on it last year in Italy. Outside of Serena Williams, the last American woman to win the French Open was Jennifer Capriati in 2001. Before that, it was Chris Evert in 1986. If not this year, Gauff has shown the kind of aptitude on clay to win in Paris at some point in her career.

Granted, the draw at this tournament has been kind. Many of the top seeds lost early, and if Gauff ends up in the final, the highest-ranked player she will have beaten is No. 33 Elise Mertens. There’s a significant gap between those opponents and No. 1 Iga Świątek, her potential opponent in the final, who won this tournament in 2020 and is currently on a 32-match winning streak.

But however the rest of the tournament unfolds, this result confirms that Gauff is very much on the right trajectory and has already accomplished quite a lot for somebody so young. As many years as she’s been around, it’s easy to forget that she just turned 18 in March and still has a long career ahead.

There are going to be ups and downs to come whether Gauff wins this title or not. But the fact she’s embraced her own development track, accepted the challenge and had faith that steady improvement would eventually yield big victories shows the kind of maturity that deserves to be rewarded with a Grand Slam title.

She’s getting closer all the time.

Follow Dan Wolken on Twitter @DanWolken.