Coco Gauff

Coco Gauff was the most-hyped American teenager since the Williams sisters, and she has turned the projection into a two-slam résumé before turning 22. Born March 13, 2004 in Delray Beach, Florida, she turned pro in 2018 and announced herself a year later — qualifying for Wimbledon at 15, ranked outside the top 300, and beating Venus Williams in the first round. The breakthrough never read as a fluke; she has spent every season since converting potential into hardware.

The game is built from the ground up. Gauff is one of the fastest, most relentless movers on tour, a defender who turns would-be winners into extra rallies and forces opponents to hit one more ball than they want to. The forehand has been the long-running project — retooled and rebuilt more than once — while the two-handed backhand, the return, and the court coverage carry the weight. At her best she drags power players into the kind of attritional baseline exchanges that suit her legs and lungs, not theirs.

The trophies arrived young. She won the 2023 US Open for her first major, then claimed Roland-Garros in 2025 to add a second slam on her supposedly weaker surface, and reached world No. 1. Along the way she's built a rivalry ledger against the era's heavyweights — Iga Swiatek, Aryna Sabalenka, and fellow Americans Jessica Pegula and Madison Keys — the names she has to get through at the US Open and Wimbledon to keep climbing.

This season she sits at No. 7, navigating the clay swing through Rome and Roland-Garros with the title defense weight that comes with being a former champion. The forehand remains the variable, but the floor — the defense, the competitiveness, the refusal to give away free points — is as high as anyone's on tour.