Behind the scenes of one of the busiest stretches in her young career, 20-year-old tennis star Coco Gauff has been patiently preparing for the launch of her second signature shoe with longtime endorser New Balance.
On Aug. 21, the Boston sportswear company unveiled Gauff’s New Balance Coco CG2 before her upcoming return to the US Open as the defending women’s singles champion. At last year’s Open, Gauff wore her debut signature shoe, the CG1, en route to winning her first career Grand Slam since turning pro and signing with New Balance at 14.
“I won my first major in the CG1, so that shoe will always be special to me,” Gauff told Andscape via email. “Having a signature shoe in the sport of tennis is a dream come true, and getting to build off the first model for the CG2 is another milestone I’m proud of.”
New Balance will officially release the Coco CG2 for $170 a pair, a year after celebrating Gauff’s Grand Slam title with the Call Me Champion advertising campaign.
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“As a brand, we were prepared for Coco’s first Grand Slam win with the Call Me Champion campaign, which we were excited to roll out once she reached that big milestone,” Evan Zeder, New Balance tennis marketing manager, told Andscape via the Zoom platform. “But, ultimately, everything resulting from her first Slam win has been more important to us. Coco is now someone all eyes are on as she continues to transcend tennis.
The New Balance Coco CG2 mixes fashion with high performance.
The Coco CG2 draws inspiration from the New Balance 550, one of tennis player Coco Gauff’s favorite designs, while incorporating geometric shapes inspired by her love of Paris.
The New Balance Coco CG2 carries over the same Energy Arc technology and adds a full-length FuelCell midsole for a propulsive underfoot feel and an Ndurance multi-court outsole for optimal traction.
The New Balance Coco CG2 showcases No. 2 on the woven label, symbolizing the most feminine single-digit number in numerology.
“She’s one of the best players in the world with one of the most sought-after trophies,” Zeder said. “So, how do we continue to evolve with her, not just from a marketing perspective, but from a product perspective? That’s where the CG2 comes in.”
Yet, despite the shoe’s late August release, the world’s No. 2-ranked women’s tennis player is not expected, or contractually obligated, to debut her CG2 on court during the year’s final major.
“There’s no pressure for Coco to wear the CG2 at the US Open,” Zeder said. “For us, the approach will always be how can Coco feel the best and most-confident on court. We know she loves the new shoe. But this current window is about her focusing on winning while we continue to establish her personality by delivering authentic storytelling.”
Gauff’s upcoming US Open appearance is her 16th tournament of 2024. During her loaded eight-month schedule, she’s played tennis in 11 countries, including at the 2024 Paris Olympics, where she served as Team USA’s female flag bearer for the opening ceremony.
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“This year hasn’t given Coco a chance to stop,” Zeder told Andscape. “Her schedule has been so crazy that we’ve tried our best not to bother her, be a distraction or overask. We tried to map out 2024 while knowing how busy she would be and that she planned to cover Vogue and do other ancillary press after winning her first Slam.
“There’s a lot of internal dialogue and conversation with her team about ensuring Coco is doing nothing that gets in the way of her main goal, which is to win tennis matches,” he said. “That doesn’t mean we haven’t said, ‘We’re launching a new shoe and need feedback.’ But, we just hope Coco doesn’t feel stress or anxiety when it comes to working with New Balance.”
Given the industry standard timeline of 18 to 24 months for the design and launch of a signature model, initial discussions about the New Balance Coco CG2 began in November 2022, about four months after Gauff’s first shoe hit retail in July 2022. That means the design process of Gauff’s second signature model kicked off nearly a full year before she won her first Grand Slam title at the 2023 US Open.
“We had literally just launched her first shoe, and then almost immediately started talking to Coco about the next iteration,” Zeder recalled. “So, I think Coco was initially a little floored at the long-term life cycles we operate around for signature product.”
In the fall of 2022, when New Balance hosted Gauff and her family in Boston for the first official meetings to discuss the design of her second shoe, she had only played a few tournaments in her debut CG1. So, New Balance had a lot of ground to cover with Gauff, who signed a multiyear contract extension with the brand to continue her signature line of footwear and apparel in 2022.
“When we first started conversations about the CG1, Coco was 16 years old. By the time the process started for the CG2, she was 18, ” Josh Wilder, New Balance senior footwear product manager for tennis, told Andscape. “Athletes undergo a lot of change from 16 to 18, so we had to put different options in front of her that were on a scale from what we’d consider mild to wild. We sat down with Coco and her whole family with about three different shoe samples. Then, we all just kind of chopped it up and expressed what we did and didn’t like about each one.”
Tennis player Coco Gauff wears the New Balance Coco CG2 in the launch colorway.
New Balance
Much of New Balance’s strategy for Gauff focuses on maintaining continuity in the brand’s team of executives and designers working on her signature footwear, apparel and marketing.
“As she’s seen us create product with and for her, Coco has been around a lot of the same members of our team,” Zeder told Andscape. “In the beginning of our partnership, she would agree with us a lot, which I think she did out of just being a very well-raised and polite individual. Before, we had to dig a lot more. Now, there’s less digging because she understands when we tell her, ‘We love it when you don’t like something,’ that her disliking something helps us just as much her liking something. So, we’re able to get through the process more efficiently, quite frankly, because she’s more confident in her style and ability to give feedback. She’s also started to understand that our work, in years’ time, will evolve and come to fruition.”
Gauff has openly expressed appreciation for working with a consistent team of creatives at New Balance. After working together on the CG1, Cordell Jordan, a Black designer, and Jodi Klann, a female design manager, returned to lead the process of creating the CG2.
“I’ve been with the brand since I was 14, so they have been there for every step of my journey and truly care about me as a person — not just an athlete,” Gauff told Andscape. “The entire team at New Balance is awesome to work with, so going through the process for a second time was so great.”
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Early on, while mapping out her second signature shoe, Gauff uttered a phrase that has guided New Balance for the past two years.
“Coco specifically told us she wanted the CG2 to be an ‘evolution, not a revolution,’ ” Wilder said. “The reason being — and she’s mentioned this a couple of times over the past few years — not everybody who follows her on Instagram plays tennis. So, she wanted her shoe to be very versatile and not just be able to be worn on the court, like many of the tennis shoes other brands produce.”
The Coco CG2 draws direct inspiration from the New Balance 550, one of the brand’s heralded lifestyle models and Gauff’s favorite silhouette to wear off-court. Gauff’s New Balance team had to receive official approval to incorporate certain elements from the 550 into the design of the CG2, particularly on the shoe’s tongue label.
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“It was pretty cool to go to the lifestyle team like, ‘Hey, we know the 550 is an iconic shoe and label, but can we make it tennis and make it Coco?’ The response was basically, ‘For Coco? Of course,’ ” Wilder recalled. “Designing with Coco, everything is about her. We don’t do anything on her shoe or product unless she says it. Our relationship with her is not about our subjective thoughts, it’s about her concrete opinions and what she wants as she changes as a person and tennis player.”
Gauff had one additional noteworthy request for the CG2, samples of which she saw in private meetings during last year’s US Open before testing the shoe for the first time in early December 2023.
“I wanted people to be able to recognize the CG2 in comparison to the CG1,” Gauff said. “The first shoe was about telling my story and letting people know who I am. The second shoe still has similar little details meaningful to where I’m at in my life now. My family has always been my biggest supporters and taught me how to uplift others. I hope fans, especially young girls, can feel me supporting them when they put on this shoe.”
Tennis player Coco Gauff practices during Day 2 of the Cincinnati Open at the Lindner Family Tennis Center on Aug. 12 in Mason, Ohio.
Dylan Buell/Getty Images
Soon, the New Balance Coco CG2 will complete the successful design, rollout and, ultimately, the moment Gauff delivered in her first shoe.
“I take a lot of pride and validation with the CG1, because it felt like more than just a shoe,” Zeder said. “It was a mid-cut in a tennis category that doesn’t produce a lot of mids. It represented a woman receiving a signature shoe, which we haven’t really seen much in history, especially outside of hoops. And tennis, in general, hasn’t really traditionally produced signature product — a topic that we got a ton of questions and pushback on. There were people who said, ‘She’s 18 and getting her own shoe, but what has she even won yet?’ even though you can look across the NBA and find a bunch of signature product made for players who don’t have championship rings. But I think any critiques of building a signature line for Coco were all thrown out the window when she hoisted that US Open trophy last year.”
Since first signing Gauff in 2018, New Balance has employed a partnership approach with Coco that’s helped fuel a brandwide renaissance of expanded athlete signings, including Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Shohei Ohtani, Arizona Cardinals rookie wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. and Brazilian soccer striker Endrick.
“It’s a special time to be at New Balance, and Coco has been with us since we first set out to authenticate our brand across all sports,” Zeder said. “We can confidently say now that we have the best athletes in the world wearing New Balance, which is something we haven’t ever been able to say. For us, Coco has long been a huge part of New Balance’s plan to build out the brand with fewer, bigger and better athletes. And it’s been so fun working to create a product that’s not only unique to the industry and tennis category but unique to Coco.
“We’re excited that we’ve reached Coco’s second signature model,” Zeder said, “and we’re even more excited because, regardless of the outcomes on court, we’re still growing with her.”
Aaron Dodson is a sports and culture writer at Andscape. He primarily writes on sneakers/apparel and hosts the platform’s Sneaker Box video series. During Michael Jordan’s two seasons playing for the Washington Wizards in the early 2000s, the “Flint” Air Jordan 9s sparked his passion for kicks.
