As Coco Gauff turns 20, here are 20 incredible things she achieved in tennis as a teenager

Coco Gauff turns 20 today—Happy Birthday, Coco!

To celebrate her big day, here are 20 of the most incredible things Coco achieved as a teenager—and considering she achieved more as a teenager than most players do in their entire career, this list wasn’t that hard to make.

First of all, in 2018, she won the Roland Garros junior title—at age 14. She was the youngest player to win the girls’ title in Paris since Martina Hingis in 1994.

In 2019, at age 15, she became the youngest woman to qualify for the main draw of Wimbledon in the Open Era. And as a No. 313-ranked wild card into qualifying, too.

At that same Wimbledon, she made it all the way to the fourth round of the main draw. She was the youngest woman to reach the second week of a major since Anna Kournikova, a slightly younger 15, at the 1996 US Open.

In the summer of 2019, she won her first WTA doubles title as a 15-year-old in Washington D.C. Partnering countrywoman Caty McNally, Coco became the youngest player to win a WTA doubles title since Hingis, 14, at Hamburg in 1995.

In the fall of 2019, she won her first WTA singles title, as a 15-year-old in Linz. She was the youngest woman to achieve the feat since Nicole Vaidisova, a younger 15, at Tashkent in 2004.

And after winning Linz, she broke into the Top 100. At 15, she was the youngest player to crack the WTA Top 100 since Sesil Karatantcheva, also a younger 15, in 2005.

At the 2020 Australian Open, she became the youngest woman to beat a Top 5 player in almost two of her lifetimes. Still 15 at the time, she beat then-No. 4-ranked Naomi Osaka in the third round, the youngest conqueror of a WTA Top 5 player since Jennifer Capriati, a younger 15, at the 1991 US Open (Capriati beat Gabriela Sabatini in the quarterfinals that year).

As a 17-year-old, Coco became the last player ever to take a set off Ashleigh Barty. In Adelaide in January 2022, she led Barty in the second round, 6-4, 4-2—the No. 1-ranked Aussie went on to win that match, 4-6, 7-5, 6-1, didn’t drop another set en route to the title, went on to win the Australian Open a few weeks later without dropping a set, then retired five weeks later.

She reached her first Grand Slam final at Roland Garros in 2022, at age 18. She was the youngest woman to reach a Grand Slam final since Maria Sharapova, 17, at Wimbledon in 2004.

She reached No. 1 in doubles that summer, too. That accolade came in August of 2022 after she won the doubles title in Toronto alongside Jessica Pegula. Only Hingis achieved the feat at a younger age—the Swiss was 17 when she did it in 1998.

In September of 2022, she broke into the Top 10 in singles for the first time. She rose from No. 12 to No. 8 after reaching her first US Open quarterfinal, and at age 18, she was the youngest American woman to crack the Top 10 since Serena Williams, 17, in 1999.

Seeded No. 1 at a WTA event for the first time at Auckland in 2023, she went all the way to the title. An 18-year-old Coco didn't even drop a set all week, losing only 22 games in 10 sets, too.

A few weeks later at the Australian Open, she recorded the 100th win of her career. Her victory over Emma Raducanu in the second round in Melbourne was career win No. 100, and at age 18, she was the youngest woman to hit that number since Caroline Wozniacki, a slightly younger 18, in 2009.

In July of 2023, at age 19, she won her first WTA 500 title at Washington D.C. She didn’t drop a set en route to that title, either.

A few weeks later, she won her first WTA 1000 title in Cincinnati. En route to that title she defeated Iga Swiatek in the semifinals, which wasn’t just her first career win over a reigning No. 1 in a completed match, but it was a personal breakthrough—she had been 0-7 against her beforehand, and 0-14 in sets.

And then, the big one: she won her first Grand Slam title at the 2023 US Open. At 19, she was the first American teenager to win the US Open this century, and just the fourth overall to do it in the Open Era after Tracy Austin (1979 and 1981), Pete Sampras (1990) and Serena Williams (1999).

She then became the first American teenager to break into the WTA Top 3 this century. The last American teenager to do that was Venus Williams, also 19, in 1999. Serena Williams didn’t crack the Top 3 until May of 2002, when she was already 20.

She put together the longest winning streak on the women’s tour in 2023. After going 5-0 to win Cincinnati and 7-0 to win the US Open, she won her first four rounds in Beijing to extend her run to 16 wins in a row before Swiatek finally snapped the streak in the semifinals of the WTA 1000 event.

In her second WTA event as the No. 1 seed, at Auckland in 2024, she went all the way to the title again. Combined with her title run at that same event in 2023, she’s now 10-0 in her career as the No. 1 seed at WTA events.

She went 7-1 in WTA finals as a teenager. Her only loss in a WTA final as a teenager came to Swiatek at Roland Garros in 2022.

And finally, she JUST became the first teenager to record 50 wins at WTA 1000 events. Her opening victory at Indian Wells over France’s Clara Burel over the weekend was her 50th at a WTA 1000 event. She’s the first teenager to hit that number since that level of tournament was created in 2009.