WTA <\/a>1000 event in Beijing, and Gauff has shared how she is feeling ahead of the tournament, making a surprise admission about how serious she takes things. <\/p>\nShe said in her pre-tournament press conference: \u201cYeah, definitely. Yeah, I mean, for me, I don\u2019t know why, it just feels different at the end of the year. Although technically I\u2019m the defending champion, it doesn\u2019t feel like that at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to say \u2018not care\u2019 because obviously I\u2019m not playing a tournament and trying to lose or anything. But yeah, there is definitely a weight that you kind of just don\u2019t care in a way, especially when you\u2019ve had like a good moment of the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think winning the French Open helped me take that weight off less. I think last year I did care, but maybe I felt a little bit like I had to do something, because I hadn\u2019t won a big title at that point, at that time of the year yet.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know how I feel right now. I definitely feel a lot lighter. It feels, again, like a practice tournament. So we\u2019ll see how it goes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gauff will be going for a second title at this event this time around, looking to draw level with Serena Williams, who won this crown twice during her career. <\/p>\n
Gauff shares what she loves about Beijing<\/p>\n
The players often look forward to the Asian tournaments getting underway, with good prize money on offer in a fantastic part of the world. <\/p>\n
Gauff is no exception and she\u2019s now shared what she loves about the city of Beijing ahead of the tournament getting started. <\/p>\n
She continued: \u201cWell, the first thing was the Great Wall. I thought that was one of the most incredible things I\u2019ve ever seen in person. Especially when you look at how long ago it was built. So that was really cool.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Forbidden City, I would like to do it again, the full experience. I only did it, like, 25 minutes with Carlos. He came late, so it got cut short. I didn\u2019t do it that much (smiling).<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the culture is really cool and very different from anything. Being from a country like the U.S., which is considered way younger than China. I think visiting a country with so much history behind it is really cool, just learning about the different dynasties, how everything is kind of intertwined, which we don\u2019t really have that in the U.S. because it is so much a melting pot, whereas here it\u2019s not so.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s really cool just to do a deep dive. I would say if you\u2019re interested, really try duck here, it\u2019s really good, and go to the Forbidden City and some of the temples. I\u2019m not a Beijing expert, but I had a great time and I definitely recommend people to try.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coco Gauff is set to defend her China Open title as she gets back on the court following…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,4305,82,593,4306],"class_list":{"0":"post-163270","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-coco-gauff","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-tennis","13":"tag-wta"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Coco](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/GettyImages-1670754927-1024x683.jpg\")
Photo by Elsa\/Getty ImagesCoco Gauff admits the China Open is like a practice tournament<\/p>\n