One of the most captivating images that came out of the late summer evening last September that saw Coco Gauff become the 2023 US Open champion—and a Grand Slam winner for the very first time—turned out to be an old one: a video that resurfaced of the same woman, 12 years prior, dancing in the crowd, overcome with joy, during Arthur Ashe Kids’ Day.
The cuteness overload was a clear takeaway—but beneath the surface of a viral clip was the past, present and future of Black American tennis all wrapped up into one.
Both the video from a decade ago and Gauff’s crowning achievement (to date) last year took place inside the stadium named for Ashe, the 1968 US Open singles champion and civil rights icon. Exactly two weeks after that video was recorded in 2012, Serena Williams, one of Gauff’s tennis idols, won the 15th of her 23 Grand Slam singles titles–one of the 13 that Serena and her sister, Venus, combined to capture across all disciplines, at Flushing Meadows. When Gauff landed a backhand down-the-line winner past Aryna Sabalenka to finish her 2-6, 6-3, 6-2 championship win, she became the youngest female American US Open champion since Serena won her first title in New York in 1999.
But as she basked in a life-changing accomplishment, Gauff made sure to pay homage to Serena and Venus and their influence in turning her childhood dreams into teenage bliss.
“I mean, they’re the reason why I have this trophy today, to be honest,” Gauff told reporters in her post-match press conference. “They have allowed me to believe in this dream.
“Growing up, there weren’t too many Black tennis players dominating the sport. It was literally, at that time when I was younger, it was just them that I can remember.”
Each year in February, the U.S. honors the Black pioneers who helped to shape the story of the country during Black History Month. Professional tennis finds itself, in 2024, having its largest collection of top-level Black athletes that future players of the sport are able to look up to and celebrate their achievements. Last year’s US Open was the centerpiece of such Black excellence in the sport, from Gauff’s victory on the women’s side, to the quarterfinal matchup between Ben Shelton and Frances Tiafoe–the first time in US Open history that two Black American men competed against each other in the singles quarterfinals.
In truth, all of 2023 was a historic year for Black tennis in the U.S.: Milestone achievements on and off the court created a visibility that’s crucial for young Black people to see the sport as a viable pursuit, and, one day, becoming the next Black tennis players whose names are known worldwide.
Gauff is today's torchbearer
Gauff shone the brightest in the constellation of Black tennis stars in 2023, with her US Open title being one of six trophies she took home: four in singles, and two in doubles with fellow American Jessica Pegula.
It was fitting that she won the US Open on the 50th anniversary of the tournament offering equal prize money to men and women: Gauff’s ascent to crossover icon was punctuated in December when she was named the highest-paid female athlete of 2023 according to Sportico—earning more than $16 million in endorsements alone.
Last year’s US Open women’s singles final was a whisker away from being an all-Black, all-American encounter, as Madison Keys fell just short in a heartbreaker of a 0-6, 7-6(1), 7-6(5) semifinal to Sabalenka. The 2017 US Open finalist has been slowed by a myriad of injuries over the past few years, but the back half of 2023 showed that Keys, on her game, takes a back seat to no one in terms of power. Her semifinal appearance in Flushing Meadows came after reaching the quarterfinals at Wimbledon two months prior. (In the Wimbledon warm-up event at Eastbourne, Keys defeated Gauff in the semifinals on her way to her seventh career WTA Tour title.) Keys made her way back to the Top 10 in the WTA rankings for the first time since 2019 at the beginning of last year.
While Keys' season was a reminder of what she's capable of, one of the breakthrough players of 2023 was Georgia native Alycia Parks, who won her first WTA Tour-level singles title in February when she stunned Frenchwoman Caroline Garcia in the latter's home city of Lyon. Along with her fearsome serve, the 6-foot-1 Parks also excelled in doubles, as she broke into the Top 30 in the discipline after winning the Cincinnati event, her first WTA 1000 doubles title.
Parks won that doubles title in Cincinnati with Taylor Townsend, one of the most gifted and versatile doubles players on the tour. Only 18 months after giving birth to her first child, a son named Adyn, Townsend reached the women’s doubles final of the 2022 US Open. She followed that up with a stunning 2023, teaming with Parks to win her first WTA 1000 event, capturing two more WTA 500 events, and making the Roland Garros final with Leylah Fernandez. All of those results helped Townsend make her debut in the Top 5 of the women’s doubles rankings.
But the exceptional results for Black American tennis players on the women’s side were not just limited to the professional level. Clervie Ngounoue, at only 17, followed up her 2022 Australian Open junior girls’ doubles title with two more Grand Slam junior titles in 2023, including winning the Wimbledon junior title that also vaulted her to the top of the world junior rankings. One month prior, at Roland Garros, she teamed with another Black American, 15-year-old Tyra Caterina Grant, to win the girls’ doubles title.
Shelton & others dial up victories, MPHs, and social media hits
Before answering the call as a Grand Slam semifinalist in Flushing Meadows last fall, now-21-year-old Ben Shelton was winning collegiate national championships at the University of Florida while coached by his father, former ATP No. 55 Bryan Shelton. The younger Shelton turned pro in August of 2022, and five months later, he broke through by reaching the quarterfinals at the 2023 Australian Open in just his second-ever appearance at a Grand Slam.
But at Shelton's next hardcourt major, he became a household name. His booming serve twice clocked 149 mph during the tournament, and a groundswell of fanfare only grew with every victory that saw him eventually become the youngest American man to reach a major semifinal in three decades. After his quarterfinal win over Tiafoe, Shelton broke out his now-iconic celebration of mimicking holding a phone to his ear before hanging up, which actually pays tribute to American track star and former University of Florida athlete Grant Holoway, who also performed that celly.
The stir caused by celebration, and his response when asked about its origins, turned Shelton into one of the most GIF-able athletes in the world in an instant.
Shelton parlayed his US Open momentum into a strong run through Asia to end the year. He defeated Jannik Sinner in Shanghai en route to reaching the quarterfinals of an ATP Masters 1000 event for the first time before winning his first tour-level sinlges title in Tokyo, the latter raising his ranking to a career-high No. 15.
While Shelton’s run to the final four at the US Open ended Tiafoe’s bid for back-to-back semifinals in NYC, it did not dampen the momentum and buzz created when the Marylander defeated Rafael Nadal and Andrey Rublev on his way to a maiden Grand Slam semi in 2022. In 2023, Tiafoe reached the Top 15 of the world rankings after a run to the Australian Open third round, and, after titles on the clay in Houston and on grass in Stuttgart, moved into the world’s Top 10 for the first time in his career.
But quick launches to stardom like Shelton's and Tiafoe's weren't all to celebrate last year. A perfect example of persistence paying off, it took six years for 6-foot-7 Christopher Eubanks to reach the world’s Top 100 after turning pro in 2017, but once he arrived, he didn’t turn back. Last March, he reached the quarterfinals of the ATP Masters 1000 event in Miami after making the main draw as a qualifier. Three months later, the Georgia Tech product won his first ATP Tour title on the grass courts of Mallorca, setting the stage for what would happen on the lawns of SW19.
In his Wimbledon debut, Eubanks’ booming serve took him to the quarterfinals and on the verge of the semis. Wins included a second-round defeat of Great Britain’s Cameron Norrie and a fourth-round triumph against Stefanos Tsitsipas, Eubanks’ first-ever win against a Top 10 player. He was two-sets-to-one up on Daniil Medvedev before losing in five in the quarterfinals, but Eubanks’ run to the last eight is made more impressive by the fact that six of the other seven quarterfinalists were ranked in the Top 8.
See the future, hear the future
Eubanks, as well as Townsend, have also made an impact in another area of the sport where voices of color have historically been underrepresented: broadcasting. While making her way back on tour after giving birth, Townsend spent time as an analyst at Tennis Channel, a role she has continued to dabble in since. Eubanks also took his turn at the headsets at Tennis Channel, and impressed so much that he then contributed commentary to ESPN’s coverage of Grand Slam tennis. Another former player, doubles specialist Nicholas Monroe, spent a few years as a broadcaster on the world feed at Grand Slam events while still competing on the tour. After his retirement at the end of 2022, Monroe has become a prominent face and voice behind the mic.
“Obviously, there’s not a lot of African Americans playing on the tour, men or women … but that’s what I try to show, that, obviously, through hard work, anything can happen,” Monroe told USOpen.org two years ago. “No matter what race you are, you have to put in the work, trust yourself, always believe in yourself.
"I think that by being on TV and being in front of the screen, I hope people can see the passion I have for the game … and hopefully that pushes other Black players to pursue tennis and, potentially, commentary as well.”
Before Tiafoe’s match with Shelton, the elder of the two Americans stated that, no matter the result, “I think tennis is going to win.”
It may take the next generation to prove it, but that match—or Gauff’s victory, or any of the other achievements of Black Americans in the sport over the last 12 months and beyond, might be the catalyst for the next torchbearer to match, or even exceed, the Black excellence currently being displayed by the group of men and women who continue to bring tennis closer to the melting-pot ethos that America has historically taken pride in.
