INDIAN WELLS — Here’s some friendly advice for the starstruck: If you run into Coco Gauff somewhere, don’t be afraid to start a conversation.
She is the third-ranked player in the tennis world, she is the reigning U.S. Open champion, and she has been featured in Vogue and Time magazines in recent weeks. She will open play in the BNP Paribas Open here this weekend against the winner of Thursday morning’s match between Xiyu Wang of China and Clara Burel of France.
She is, in short, a Really Big Thing in the world that has descended this week on the desert, on the patch of land the promoters refer to as Tennis Paradise.
And Gauff was asked Wednesday about her comfort level with the fame and attention that have become part of her life. This was a little while after Carlos Alcaraz, the second-ranked men’s singles player in the world, was asked a similar question and said:
“Well, for me it’s good, most of the time. I think it’s normal. A lot of days, you wake up with not a good mood, and you want to hide or not be recognized (by) the people. But I try to take it as natural as I can. I like that the people know me and recognize me.”
And he hasn’t been staring out from the covers of any non-tennis magazines lately. Gauff is the cover subject of the April issue of Vogue. And she was included on Time’s “Women of the Year” list in its Feb. 21 issue, one of 12 individuals honored as “extraordinary leaders working toward a more equal world.”
“I don’t think one means more than the other for me, because it’s two aspects of my life that I really care about,” she said. “The world of fashion and beauty is something I’ve always cared for and cared about. And Time (focuses) more on the core issues of making the world a better place, which is also something I care about. So I guess to put it in that perspective, maybe Time is more influential because of the platform that Time has created to help uplift social activism and uplift causes…
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