‘I’ll try not to be the reason I lose’ – Former Roland-Garros runner-up Coco Gauff on positivity and dealing with pressure

Coco Gauff has been labelled the next big thing on the women’s tour for so long, it’s difficult to remember that she’s still a teenager.

And she admitted after her first-round win over Rebeka Masarova that she still finds it hard to deal with pressure – and that she remains her own toughest critic.

Reflecting on her run to the Roland-Garros final last year, she told reporters: “The journey to the final I learned a lot from, and I think I took a lot of a more relaxed approach to that tournament last year. It’s not easy for me to find it every tournament, so that final I think I learned to enjoy the moment more.

“Honestly, I lost that final, and like for like a week or two, I really thought it was the worst thing ever, thought all these things.

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“I would say I am my biggest critic. Really, anybody on my team would say this. I need to speak more positively about myself, and it’s something I’m continually continuing to work on. And really in my match today I applied it a lot. I was allowing myself to say no negative things to myself. You know, sometimes I think it. I do think it, but I try to combat it with that.

“I tried it today at work, so I’m going to just keep going on and try not to be the reason why I lose and let the reason be my opponent, not myself.”

Gauff: I thought I should be winning every match

She added that she is still going through a learning process to find the best way to deal with the pressure that she inevitably feels.

“I wish there was a recipe that each person could follow. I think that really you have to personalise it to yourself.

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“For me, I feel like a lot of my life I felt pressure. In juniors, you know, everybody pegged me to be the next whatever, next big thing or whatever, and then the way I entered the circuit, everybody was saying things about that.

“So I did feel it early on that I had to, I think, outplay that talent that I had at that moment. And, yeah, I do think I am talented and was talented then, but I felt like, you know, I was 15 playing against grown women, so I don’t know, at that time in my head I thought that I should be winning every match, and obviously that’s not the case.

“So I think the biggest thing was trying not to beat myself up, and, you know, you have seen players in the past have a big outbreak and then kind of folds. I think I was determined not to be one of them.”

She added: “I think for the most part, as long as I keep moving forward, even though there is going to be some setbacks, I had setbacks this year, I had setbacks even last week, and I’m going to have setbacks in the future, but I think for the most part as long as I keep moving forward I should be okay.”

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