Coco Gauff bowed out of the first Masters 1000 of 2024, Indian Wells, earlier than she wanted. She was the higher-seeded player and in more consistently good form than her semifinal opponent, Maria Sakkari, and yet the Greek completely outperformed Gauff in a three-set victory. After the match, Gauff decided to stop by an In-N-Out restaurant, and while at the drive-through, things changed.
A family who was also at the restaurant noticed Gauff and the family had two young children. Gauff spoke with the family and took a couple of selfies with the kids and the whole situation seemed pleasant. But the family did not want to just meet the tennis player, they wanted to cheer her up after her loss as well.
They decided to pay for Gauff’s food and wrote her a handwritten note that read in part, “Coco, thanks for being an amazing role model!…Love the Rowley family from Utah.” The father of the children, Shane, posted later on X (the artist formerly known as Twitter) and thanked Gauff for “making these kids dreams come true.”
Coco Gauff gets some love and Stan Wawrinka gives a rebuke
Sometimes the world can seem like an isolating place where people are not nice. The encounter between Coco Gauff and the Rowley family is a good reminder not all is bad. There are still good and nice people in the world.
https://x.com/utahshane/status/1769054072047321320?s=20
One thing, however, that might not be good is the idea of a “premier” tour of tennis. The concept has been around for a few years and would be a tour for the top players alone with fewer events and more money. The problem is that lower-ranked players could easily miss out on the tour and be forced to make less money at tournaments that are not involved in the elite tour.
Multi-time Grand Slam winner Stan Wawrinka detests the idea of a separate tour, though. Speaking with l’Equipe, Wawrinka said, “Why doesn’t anyone think they are crazy? There is nothing in this project good for everyone, but only for them. They don’t have any transparency on their accounts and they don’t work on the vision of the future of tennis, they don’t want to work in the direction of the players and young people, but to make their pie bigger.”
