CoCo Vandeweghe surprisingly reaches the semi-finals of the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix in Stuttgart – and has fun with the audience.
By Florian Goosmann from Stuttgart
The mediocre European musician, who experienced the 90s, immediately thinks of “CoCo”… “Jamboo”. “Coco Jamboo”, the lyrically quite meaningless cult hit of the Eurodance trio Mr. President, stands for summer, sun, beach and sand feeling, and if you now have it right in your head… you’re welcome.
The Californian CoCo Vandeweghe may have summer, sun and beach, but not so much sand, at least not on the tennis court. Vandeweghe prefers the sledgehammer method: hard serve, smooth basic strokes, and when asked that one can be quite creative on a clay court, she replied at the beginning of the week: “I don’t think anyone uses the term’creative’ in a sentence with my name”. She didn’t even make a secret of why: “I don’t have much feeling I’m playing pretty simple. “I wish I could do more things, but they never showed me that.” She learned the praise very late, Vandeweghe went on to explain that she was still working on the stop. Your game on sand “gets better, slowly but surely”.
It does, even if there is no classic clay court in the Porsche Arena. It’s fast here, and creative or not: Vandeweghe has played her way into the Stuttgart semi-final quite impressively: 6:0, 6:1 over Sloane Stephens (here she was actually the more patient one), a 6:4, 4:6, 6:3 over the quite creative Laura Siegemund, 6:4, 6:1 over industry leader Simona Halep.
Vandeweghe is not everyone’s darling, which she usually doesn’t seem to care – but she likes to shakert with the Stuttgart audience. Already on Monday, at the tiebreak event before the tournament, she played badly (“I got my ass kicked”), but took care of the show. At the “CoCo, I love you”-call of a viewer behind her she countered without hesitation: “I can’t say that about you because I can’t see you.” And when she was asked again about her sand phobia after the victory over Halep, she thanked them for the effort they made in Stuttgart to make the clay court tasty for her.
But Vandeweghe was not a favourite of the German audience until recently. In the Fed Cup duel in Hawaii a year ago, she pulled out all the stops in the match against Andrea Petkovic and after trailing 3:6, 2:4, did not give any more game; even the master of “ugly winning”, Brad Gilbert, would have taken his hat off about the way to get the Germans out of the game.
As Vandeweghe already has the “Winning ugly” expertise, she signed the Australian Pat Cash instead of Gilbert in the summer of 2017, just as she herself was a friend of winning points quickly and once equipped with a determined net game. “I think she can win a major,” said the 1987 Wimbledonchamp when he took office. “She has the power to wipe players off the field.”
Vandeweghe had already reached her first major semi-final in Australia; in Wimbledon she was able to win the title thanks to some thanks to Cash’s help. The end was in the quarter-finals, but at the Home Slam in New York she entered the semi-finals again and at the B-WC in Zhuhai – and was among the top ten in the world, where she stayed for twelve weeks; the extroverted 26-year-old is currently ranked 16th.
She proves again and again that she feels comfortable in the spotlight, as for example in round one of the US Open in 2015, when she had herself interviewed on the court after winning the first set against Stephens – in the middle of the match. Vandeweghe was born with an offensive approach to the public: Mama Tauna was an Olympic swimmer in 1976, Grandpa Ernie was a basketball player for the New York Knicks, Uncle Kiki was also a basketball player. Oh yes, and keyword spotlight: Grandma Colleen was Miss America in 1952.
Speaking of show business, Miss America and Mr. President: “Coco Jamboo” stayed in the top ten for 16 weeks in 1996 and became the absolute summer song. CoCo Vandweghe still needs two more victories in Stuttgart – and it would be a sure spring hit.