Andy Roddick hails Serena Williams successor after US Open success
When Serena Williams and Roger Federer each retired and Rafa Nadal near hanging up his racket as nicely, Andy Roddick had been frightened about the place the following massive star was coming from, till now. The reply to his query is 19-year-old Coco Gauff, who landed the primary Grand Slam of her profession final weekend when she got here from behind to beat new world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka 2-6, 6-3, 6-2 and clinch the US Open in New York.
In doing so, the American turned the primary teenager to win the distinguished match since a 17-year-old Serena Williams overcame Martina Hingis at Flushing Meadows in 1999.
Gauff demonstrated her star high quality potential 4 years in the past when aged simply 15, she surprised Wimbledon by knocking five-time champion Venus Williams out within the first spherical on the All England Club.
With her first main underneath her belt and now as much as third on the planet rankings, the sky is the restrict for the Atlanta-born star and former US Open winner Roddick believes the game has now discovered its pure successor to the Williams period.
Speaking to Betway, Roddick stated: “I was one of the dummies who questioned whether there would be a vacuum in tennis post Roger and Rafa and Serena, so the timing of Coco Gauff’s win couldn’t have been better, especially here in the US.
“Venus and Serena had been Coco’s idols, so to announce herself on the Grand Slam stage within the first 12 months of the US Open after Serena’s retirement – a match the place we noticed Serena carry the general public curiosity for a few many years – is fairly poetic.
“She didn’t play her best every single match, including the final, so the most impressive thing to me was the adjustment in strategy and turning her average days into three-set wins.
“She tried to go extra toe-to-toe with Aryna Sabalenka within the first set and realised that wasn’t going to work, so she wanted to make her hit as many pictures as attainable and depend on her legs.
“She went with the mentality of saying, ‘I’m going to be a volume shooter, you’re going to have to beat me four or five times in a rally and I’m going to bring 25,000 of my closest friends into this match, too.’
“It appeared to be slightly an excessive amount of for Sabalenka, who deserves credit score for being the brand new No 1 on the planet. It’s not the US Open title that she needed, but it surely’s a hell of a comfort prize.”
Roddick also paid tribute to his former coach Brad Gilbert who successfully trained Andre Agassi and Andy Murray and has been working with Gauff since April, helping her to win 18 of her last 19 matches.
The former US No. 1 is also enthused by the future of women’s tennis with competition for Slams seriously hotting up this year.
“I couldn’t be happier for my outdated coach Brad Gilbert,” said Roddick. “I’m positive there have been occasions the place he questioned whether or not he was going to educate once more, particularly somebody that had the potential to win a Grand Slam, however I’m under no circumstances stunned by the success that he’s had with Coco.
“I think he’d been running a lot of those parallels with me from 20 years ago, but the difference is that she’s not going to stop at one. There are dominant forces in women’s tennis, but I don’t think three players are going to win 66 of the next however many Slams, so there’s a much better runway for her.
“With totally different girls’s winners on the 4 Slams this 12 months, there’s an intriguing stage of parity. It appears to be constructing in the direction of males’s tennis within the 80s, the place you had a bunch of gamers with the potential to win a handful somewhat than every thing resting on one or two folks.”