***UPDATED!!!***

For anyone living on another planet (immersed in medieval Daoist ritual manuals, or whatever)…

As if the Women’s World Cup wasn’t enough, I’m only too happy to subscribe to the mass adulation for Cori Gauff at Wimbledon. Her two victories were just exhilarating.

Mature and focused at 15, she’s an inspiration. Her parents seem great too.

She was charming in handling the usual fatuous questions at her 3rd-round press conference:

When you were match point down on Centre Court, were you thinking, what would Venus and Serena do?

Er, no! …

which ranks along with Bertrand Russell’s comment after his plane crash. And at the risk of sounding like the woman visiting the young Living Buddha, I love the way she tucks her chair into the desk at the end.

[Spoiler: typical Grauniad-reading liberal metropolitan elite quote coming up] At a time when the world seems doomed to suffer under mendacious cynical rich old white men, we all need role models like Coco—a list that might also include Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Greta Thunberg, Katelyn Ohashi, and indeed Oxana Thaili. It’s no coincidence that the most inspiring of such figures are female.

I wish her well, and look forward to the day when AOC can welcome her to the White House!

Update: US Open, 2019
In a further episode of the saga, Coco’s home crowd exults in her style, social media goes even wilder, and in defeat she is magnanimously persuaded by Naomi Osaka to share this moving post-match interview:

See also Enough already. And note the principled response of Coco and Naomi to the murder of George Floyd.

2023 update!!! 🍾🍾🍾🍾🍾🍾🍾🍾
And so to Coco’s first Major title, again, suitably, at the US Open—what moving drama, striving, and achievement is embodied in the ritual of solo sporting competition!

For the women’s final of the 2021 US Open, please relish A playlist for Emma and Leylah! See also A sporting medley: ritual and gender.