What We Can Learn About Book Coaching From Coco Gauff

Thoughts about showing up

Photo by Dmitry Osipenko on Unsplash

I watched tennis professional Coco Gauff play a second-round match at the Indian Wells tournament this weekend. She hit 21 double faults (which is to say, she made 21 bad mistakes that were completely her fault) on her way to barely winning her match.

It was so painful to watch this young woman struggle.

You could see her cringe every time her serve hit the net.

You could see her looking at her coach, beseeching him for help.

You could see her going up to the service line again and again, taking a deep breath, and continuing to try.

In the on-court interview afterward, she said, "Some days I'm good at this, and other days I'm not, but I just keep showing up."

She is just 20 years old, but she gets it: to get to where you want to go, you have to keep showing up.

Tennis is a brutal sport — you are alone in a stadium full of people gasping when you miss, shouting when your opponent does something amazing, hooting, booing, and hollering.

At one point, during the tie-breaker in that game, when the whole stadium was hushed in anticipation some jerk shouted down at Coco — “Go see Andy Roddick.” This was a reference to a former star tennis player who was known for his serve, and is now known as a kind of “serve doctor.” It was shockingly rude and it made my blood boil.

Coco just walked right by, went to the service line, and showed up. I was so impressed.

It reminded me of a quote from Billie Jean King, who I heard not so long ago on Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ podcast. King said, “Pressure is a privilege.”

It’s a privilege to be in a position where people watch every mistake you make.

It’s a privilege to be in a position where people feel free to judge you.

It’s a privilege to be in a position where you might get it right and you might get it wrong.

It’s a privilege to be in a position where you get to show up for yourself, again and again.

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