Ross: A brief moment of extreme sportsmanship that we all need
Sep 3, 2019, 7:26 AM | Updated: 10:04 am
(Chaz Niell/Getty Images)
In case you missed it over the weekend – it was in the third round of the US Open. A 15-year-old tennis phenom, Coco Gauff, was up against top-ranked Naomi Osaka. And even though the crowd was definitely pro-Coco, she lost in straight sets.
And as you do in tennis, she took the long walk to center court to congratulate the winner.
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“Tell us what Naomi told you at the net,” an interviewer asked Coco.
“She told me that I did amazing and good luck,” Coco said. “And then she asked if I could do the on-court interview with her. And I said no because I knew I was gonna cry the whole time, but she encouraged me to do it.”
And so the winner and the loser did the interview together.
You don’t get much information from those interviews, but just to see a winner sharing the spotlight felt good amidst the more depressing events of the weekend.
“Thank you Naomi, I don’t want people to think I’m taking this moment away from her, because she really deserves it, so thank you,” Coco said.
It’s sort of a reverse Kanye West.
Now I will say that I wouldn’t want this to happen all the time. We certainly don’t need to see the opposing tackles embrace in the NFL division finals. And as fate would have it, Osaka was herself defeated in the next round. So nice guys don’t always finish first. But she won on class, and it was a moment of TV you’d actually want your kids to see.