For the eight consecutive year, a black female tennis player is the world’s highest-paid female athlete. In 2023, US Open champion Coco Gauff earned the top spot with $22.7 million in total earnings, and she’s only 19. Fellow tennis player Naomi Osaka was the top earner the last three years. Osaka is due back on the WTA tour in January; will Gauff eclipse her on the court as well?
Best Year Of Gauff’s Career
First, let’s start with Gauff’s incredible year on and off the court.
At 19, this was her most successful year on tour. She won four titles, including her first WTA 500 singles title in Washington D.C., her first WTA 1000 singles title in Cincinnati and her first grand slam singles title at the US Open. She had a record of 51-16 and finished the year with her highest ranking, No. 3. She also collected $6.7 million in prize money.
Off the court, Gauff earned $16 million in endorsements from her brand partners New Balance, Barilla, Microsof, and Bose.
Osaka has not played a match on tour since September 2022 and gave birth to her first child this past July. But she’s already announced she will play the Brisbane International in early January as a warmup for the year’s first Grand Slam, the Australian Open.
Despite not playing a match in over a year, Osaka finished 2023 as the fifth highest-paid female athlete with $15 million in endorsement earnings.
Osaka is a four-time Grand Slam singles champion and when she played was the best hardcourt women’s player. Her two Australian Open and two US Open titles say so. She also has WTA 500 and WTA 1000 titles on her resumé.
Osaka Has Struggled With Her Mental Health
In the past, Osaka has talked about her mental health struggles and dealing with the pressure of being the world’s no. 1. It has caused many to doubt her abilities to return to top form.
We’ll find out next month at the start of the season, but she’ll enter a very different tour with women at the top of their games, including world no. 1 Iga Swiatek, Aryna Sabalenka, Elena Rybakina and Jessica Pegula, to name a few.
As far as Gauff, she’s uniquely positioned to handle her success and rise perhaps more so than Osaka. For starters, Gauff’s rise has been steady. This includes beating five-time Wimbledon champion Venus Williams in 2019 as a 15-year-old, during the first round and Venus was nowhere near her prime. It was a big moment to be sure, but nothing like what Osaka experienced.
In 2018, Osaka won her first US Open title against the GOAT Serena Williams, who returned from maternity leave that year and made the Wimbledon Final in July. When you beat the GOAT in a Grand Slam final, the expectations and attention skyrocket. We all remember the trophy presentation where Osaka was booed by the crowd and both women cried.
That win may have been the best and worst thing for Osaka. The expectation that she would advance deep at every Grand Slam was overwhelming.m, especially considering she didn’t build up a run of singles titles leading up to that 2018 US Open.
Gauff has been heralded as next for a while now, but doesn’t appear to be on anyone’s timetable but her own. She suffered a low point at Wimbledon this past summer and rebounded with the best stretch of her young career.
Time will ultimately tell where these two tennis champions end up.
