Protegee Upsets Heroine in Australian Open

Venus Williams is a formidable personality in the women’s tennis world, Venus who started winning laurels at the early age of 10, have always remained strong even when so many believed age was not on her side, alas, success is but for a season.

With the Australian Open Draw out, people speculated on the odds that Coco Gauff stood a chance with Venus Williams considering that the teenager had once been her upset in the first round of a similar Grand Slam tournament.

Young Coco Gauf has become Venus Williams’ “Achilles heel” because during last year’s Wimbledon Grand Slam, the pair of Venus and then virtually “unknown, nobody and teenage” Coco met and the impossible happened, Venus lost to Coco, a grossly inappropriate upset like that certainly would leave the jitters in one’s consciousness, so one can just imagine that Venus meeting her Achilles heel would have totally wrought some real damage to her confidence.

History has a knack for repeating itself, during the last All England Club tournament, the youngest member of the combatants took down the oldest combatant, so here was history repeating itself, the 39 years old Venus lost again to the budding 15-year-old Coco Gauf.

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“I was a bit shocked, I’m sure everyone was a bit shocked.”

Talking about the tournament, Coco said

“That was really difficult. She played really well, I was really nervous.”

As soon as the draw was released, the anticipation for this first match was fever-pitched because both players had a history, as soon as the match started, it was a battle for supremacy from the word go, the first set proved to be thrill loaded, the teenage Coco tried continuously to use her youthful strength to lead the game but Venus always brought her experience to bear thus watering down all of Coco’s strategies.

Recall that Williams was a veteran of the women’s title who already had in her collection seven Grand Slam singles trophies when Gauff was still in nappies.

This struggle between protegee and role model went on until the fourth set point when through share persistence Gauff finally got a 3-0 lead and stuck unto the lead like glue and finally capping the game with a 7-6, 6-3 win.

Coco is an athlete to watch, she is the material “greatest athlete of all time” are made of, she has exhibited terrific skills in the game, her big, blustering serves, her capacity to hold her ground doggedly to her instinct to predict where her opponents would place their next serve.

Thanking her numerous fans, she said

“I just want to say thank you guys so much. You guys were chanting my name.”

In a chat with ESPN, the victorious teenager said

“I definitely was more confident this time”

While in a chat with The New York Times, Coco said

“My mission is to be the greatest

“That’s my goal, to win as many Grand Slams as possible. But for today, my mission was to win.”