Coco Gauff was pretty adamant about stopping playing doubles but she doesn’t regret her decision to keep playing after winning the 2024 Roland Garros doubles tournament.
The young American was one of the rare top singles players who also played doubles regularly. The vast majority of top players simply focused on singles, which she’ll do moving forward, but she still found time for doubles in the French capital.
Her participation at this year’s Roland Garros should have focused on singles, but in the end, she did play the doubles, and it proved to be a great decision. Partnering with multi-Grand Slam winner Katerina Siniakova, Gauff was able to go all the way to the final and win it.
It was another significant achievement in the 20-year-old’s career, who admitted that she wanted to win a Grand Slam trophy in doubles before she could make a decision about focusing solely on singles.
“Yeah doubles, I definitely didn’t think it would happen to me to be frank. I think that was like one of the few times in my life after I lost the first two finals I was like okay well you know I reached to that point maybe I should focus on singles.”
The run in Paris reminded her of her US Open run from last year, which was also very unexpected. Both of them came in moments of doubt and certainly boosted the American’s confidence, which is always good.
“But yeah I think it’s just one of those things that just, when you least expect it to happen it happens. Same thing in the US Open. When I won, I didn’t expect to win. I was having a really bad year and then here I didn’t even expect to play. So I think it’s funny how life teaches you those lessons, that sometimes it’s better just to be relaxed and good things will happen.”