Coco Gauff gets fired up to prove her haters wrong again
US Open champion Coco Gauff insists that she is inspired by the negativity sent her way through social media.
While she doesn’t seek out or welcome the bitterness and negativity, she finds that it fires her up.
Gauff has revealed that she has always felt like her brain was wired differently when it comes to negativity and she feels that she gets some energy from it at times.
She had addressed this after her US Open win with an inspirational take: “I tried my best to carry this with grace and I’ve been doing my best. So honestly, to those who thought [they] were putting water in my fire, you’re really adding gas to it. And now, I’m really burning so bright right now.”
Gauff has now found that her own words are being used as inspiration by other athletes, such as WNBA MVP Breanna Stewart.
“It was really cool to be quoted by such an incredible athlete as her, especially someone that’s older to me, way more established in her field or her sport than I am, draw inspiration from me,” Gauff said from Beijing after learning that Stewart had quoted her in her MVP acceptance speech.
Gauff says that she often can’t help from stumbling across the negativity but she has at least tried to refrain from firing back in the comments.
“I feel like my brain just works differently,” she explained. “I still have the filters on my Instagram. I don’t see anything. I see the comments.’
“I used to not be on Twitter at all. I’m still really not on Twitter much. But sometimes you get caught up in the scroll. The way the page is, the accounts that you interact with, you see yourself. I interact with tennis a lot obviously, so those tweets come up. Obviously I see about myself, positive and negative.’
“I wouldn’t say negativity is something that’s welcome. It’s more something that I draw inspiration from. I wouldn’t recommend everybody to do that.
“My agent and my team advise not to comment back, so I use my racquet to do it (smiling).”
Gauff is back in action in Beijing, the final WTA 1000 event of the season, but she has also accepted a wildcard to the Zhengzhou Open fearing that she might be undercooked for the Tour Finals.
“I wanted to have a second tournament in case this one doesn’t go as well,” she said.
“I wanted matches before the WTA Finals because from the US Open to the Finals is a long stint. If you lose early here (in Beijing), the Finals is a long stint.”
“I wanted to play at least two tournaments down here.”
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