Be It Tennis or Sneakers, Coco Gauff Is the Main Character
She's electrifying the 2023 US Open, dominating headlines, and the bold young face of American tennis' bright future. She's Coco Gauff and she's, as the kids say, "killing it," both on and off-court.
Gauff's latest and greatest claim to fame is wining the 2023 US Open, securing a Grand Slam — #1 wins at all four major tennis championships within a single season — at the tender age of 19. She's been deservingly called a "phenom" and olayed an important role in shifting perceptions around the game that she's since made her own.
“Players shouldn’t have to adjust to tennis," Gauff recently told Highsnobiety. "Tennis should be adjusting to us.”
Before the US Open even began, though, it was deemed Gauff's by default. She was guaranteed at least some form of victory through the combo of her unquestionable skill, undeniable star power, and unbelievably devoted TIkTok-aged fanbase.
Seriously, the kids love Gauff and it's not just because she's incredibly good at tennis. I mean, she's obviously a tennis legend in the making, but she's also an "it" girl. Coco Gauff is genuinely cool, something you can't say about any ol' athlete.
New Balance, Gauff's clothing and footwear sponsor, cannily angled the 19-year-old tennis ingenue as its star pitchwoman prior to the US Open.
Gauff was New Balance's face for the US Open; she was there for NB's Coco's Court NYC pop-up; her visage graced Times Square (again).
Most interestingly, Coco Gauff had suddenly became the face of New Balance's hottest sneaker collaborations, demonstrating unusually far-reaching influence for an athlete specializing in a comparatively niche sport.
Obviously, tennis isn't exactly a best-kept secret or anything but compared to, say, basketball, it's not typically a cache of youth culture.
And yet, in mid-August, an illustrated Gauff appeared in the campaign for coveted Danish label GANNI's latest New Balance shoe. Weeks later, she was modeling the next sure-to-sell-out NB sneaker co-signed by Aimé Leon Dore, the T500 court shoe.
These are big advertorial gets for anyone, let alone a 19-year-old whose profile is still rising. But Coco Gauff is already a certified star.
Here, it must be said that Gauff's co-sign is likely not necessary to move these collaborative shoes.
Though searches for Ganni's New Balance spiked by over 1000 percent in August, you can likely put that down to Ganni's obsessive fans trying to get their hands on the shoes. Meanwhile, ALD is similarly capable of selling anything. Like, it'd make a co-branded cereal box fly off the shelves, with or without a celebrity tie-in.
But Coco Gauff's presence in these recent campaigns isn't down to a marketing gimmick. It's affording these sneakers an air of authenticity and demonstrating that they, like Gauff, have crossover appeal.
It's New Balance's way of saying, "These shoes are cool enough on their own merits, but they're also cool enough for Coco Gauff."
It's an insinuation that Gauff is both a supremely talented athlete and a cultural tastemaker, not a claim many of her peers could make. To be cool enough to organically appear in ads for buzzy sneakers while bringing home the Grand Slam? Only Coco Gauff.
This article was published on September 8, 2023, and updated on September 10.
