Andy Roddick has expressed his admiration for Coco Gauff’s father, Corey, applauding him for defying the negative history associated with female players being coached by their fathers.
Gauff’s coach, Brad Gilbert, sought assistance from his former protege, Roddick, to improve the World No. 3’s serve ahead of her campaign at the Australian Open. The former World No. 1 obliged, spending a few days with the 19-year-old and her team, including her father, during which time he gained insight into the team’s workings.
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On the inaugural episode of the ‘Served with Andy Roddick’ podcast, Roddick discussed the prevalent negative trend of female players being coached by their fathers. He characterized some of these fathers as “psychopaths” and irresponsible, not just as coaches but as parents.
“Also, it’s been spoken about a little bit but it needs to be spoken about more. Especially in our sport where there has been a negative history of fathers of women tennis players being psychopaths and being irresponsible to the total human. Not the tennis but the total human,” he said (at 49:56).
However, the former World No. 1 emphasized that Coco Gauff’s father, Corey, stood out as a “rare” exception due to his ability to step back and allow his daughter’s coaches to take charge of her training. Roddick distinguished him from the numerous “cautionary tales” associated with other fathers in women’s tennis.
“Corey Gauff was here also and his ability to not be the center of attention, doesn’t need the information to come from him, that is rare and it sounds like something that should be very obvious and it’s not. In the history of our sport it is not,” he said.
“There are a lot of cautionary tales and I won’t name them out of respect for the people who are on the bad side of those cautionary tales but it has been rampant in our sport,” he added.
