Corey Gauff, father and coach of teenage tennis sensation Coco Gauff, said that his daughter endured stress from fame but was never diagnosed with depression.
Coco wrote a post for Behind the Racquet last week explaining she had a “dark mindset” last summer before Wimbledon and thought about taking a year-long break to focus on life. “Throughout my life, I was always the youngest to do things, which added hype that I didn’t want. It added this pressure that I needed to do well fast. Once I let that all go, that when I started to have the results I wanted. Right before Wimbledon, going back to around 2017/18, I was struggling to figure out if this was really what I wanted. I always had the results, so that wasn’t the issue, I just found myself not enjoying what I loved,” the 16-year-old wrote.
She continued: “For about a year, I was really depressed. That was the toughest year for me so far. Even though I had, it felt like there weren’t many friends there for me. When you are in that dark mindset, you don’t look on the bright side of things too often, which is the hardest part.”
Her father spoke with the New York Times and explained that labeling her issue as depression is incorrect. “That’s the thing that was alarming, and I knew that was going to be the word that got picked up,” Corey Gauff said. “She was never clinically depressed, never diagnosed with depression, never seen anybody about depression.”
Coco is now the youngest player in history to qualify for the main draw at Wimbledon, and she’s already made a name for herself. Coco made it to the fourth round at the All England Club, according to ESPN. The teen earned a third-round appearance at the U.S. Open and winning her first singles titles at Linz as well as two doubles trophies at Washington and Luxembourg, the outlet reports.
