What Pakistanis can learn from 15-year-old Coco Gauff.

Hailing from America, Coco Gauff defeated former world number one Japanese tennis star Naomi Osaka at the Australian Open on Friday. The 15-year-old - who has now landed herself amongst some of the best tennis players in the world - was taught by her father, Corey Gauff and didn't always have the best facilities to train.

Regardless, she started working at the age of eight and seeing her determination, her parents gave up their careers so they could focus on her tennis training.

She was later sponsored by Serena Williams' coach, Patrick Mouratolglou to receive high-level training. But isn't that the story of many other sports stars in the world? Everyone fights adversity, but with a little help they blossom into something the world has never seen.

15-year-old Gauff beats defending champion Osaka in Australian Open

While everyone has their own fair share of struggle, there is a lot that one can learn from Gauff, especially us Pakistanis.

One of the first things that Gauff's story teaches us is the importance of getting girls into sports. In a country like Pakistan, girls are more often than not pulled out of schools, let alone receive proper sports training. Moreover, everything else which is not spelled cricket (or men) receives nearly no attention.

And if the girls, somehow or the other, do tend to succeed and earn a medal for the country, they are forgotten in a matter of a few days or something other than their sporting abilities become the topic of the town. Case in point: Sahib-i-Asra. The 21-year-old Pakistani sprinter not only won the first international medal for herself during the 2019 South Asian Games but helped in improving the country's tally in athletics with three medals.

The media flocked her when the story of her having a cleric father surfaced, but nearly no one welcomed her at the airport when she did something in athletics for Pakistan. Let alone recognition, she was not even given a plane ticket to travel back to Faisalabad after returning from the South Asian Games, and had to travel by bus from Lahore to her hometown.

Back to...