It was a dream come true for Coco Gauff. The 21-year-old reeled off four straight games to defeat Jessica Pegula 6-4, 7-5 in an all-American final at the Wuhan Open on Sunday. The match wasn’t without drama. Being 5-3 down in the second set, Gauff got to stay in the game, got her composure, and broke Pegula to love to tie at 5-5, demonstrating precisely why she is the third-ranked player in the world. Yet, it was even more special; the accomplishment itself was not only the scoreboard but the reality that her mother shared.

Candi Gauff, Coco’s mother, recently shared several Instagram stories celebrating the win. One featured a collage with Venus Williams on top and Coco on the bottom, captioned: “The only American woman to win in Wuhan.” And it’s true, Coco and Venus Williams are the only American women to have won the Wuhan Open singles title. In 2015, Venus took hers, and a decade later, Coco did, and this was a unique feat in American tennis history.

Another story was about Coco’s hard-court dominance, comparing her to Serena Williams: “First player to win 9 straight hard-court finals since Serena.” Once more precisely, Gauff was the first female since Serena (2013, 2015) to claim nine consecutive WTA hard-court finals. China appears to be her new home: she has already won both WTA-1000 titles in the country, in Beijing in 2024 and now in Wuhan in 2025, which is only second to Caroline Garcia in 2017.

Even after winning, Gauff couldn’t believe it and said, “Winning every match (in the tournament) in straight sets, I don’t know if I’ve done that before on a title run,” Gauff said. “I just felt like I was really proud of what I accomplished this week, regardless of the result today.”

This isn’t the first time her mother, Candi, has openly celebrated her achievements. Throughout each tournament, she posts about Coco’s successes, sharing the joy and pride with fans. But behind all the wins, it is evident that the family of Gauff has been making a lot of sacrifices in a bid to help her achieve her dream. This marked Gauff’s second title of the year, after her French Open victory on clay, and brought her career total to 11 titles.

How Coco Gauff’s family fueled her rise

Coco Gauff did not become a tennis star overnight. Her parents, Candi and Corey, were there with her since the very start, and they believed in her potential, even when she was a little girl playing with hitting balls in the backyard. She was actually realizing a dream after she won her first-round match over Venus Williams in 2019 at Wimbledon, and that proved to them that their support was not something they only hoped for, but something that was happening. “My dad told me I could do this when I was eight, and obviously you never believe it,” Coco recalled. But it wasn’t easy-peasy.

The path to success was full of sacrifices and inexhaustible work. Her parents realized that Coco could make the top in her talent by the time she was in the second grade, thus abandoning their lives in Atlanta and moving back to the town of Delray Beach, Florida, to have a chance to be near her family. Candi also resigned her teaching post to homeschool Coco, and Corey later quit his healthcare executive job to become her full-time coach. The family had to traverse the uncertain times together, and they were joking that they had become a single-income and no-income family, all in the name of the dream of Coco.

The fruit of such a resolution is incredible. In August 2023, Coco became the youngest champion of the Mubadala Citi DC Open, then in the same month, she won the Cincinnati Open, and in September 2023, she won the US Open to become a Grand Slam champion. Her parents were present in all her victories. When she won the French Open in 2025, and in Wuhan, they were cheering her on, with both tears and pride. In retrospect, it is apparent that the success of Coco can be, in both measure, attributed to her talent, and to a family who believed, sacrificed, and fought with her every step of the way.