The ultimate ambition for the majority of tennis players is to win a Grand Slam. But Coco Vandeweghe is different. She dreams of following in the footsteps of her mother, Tauna, who competed in two Olympics, reaching the 100m backstroke semifinal at Montreal 1976 and winning a volleyball silver medal at Los Angeles 1984.

However, it looks like Vandeweghe will have to wait at least another four years to realize her dream. The top 56 players in the world at the cut-off time, which was immediately after the French Open, would typically have qualified for the Rio Olympics, and Vandeweghe was then ranked No. 43. However, each national tennis association is only allowed to send a maximum of four players to the Olympics, and these must be their four highest-ranked players. Vandeweghe is the USA’s fifth-highest-ranked player, so, barring an injury to one of the top four, she will miss out.

Vandeweghe said, ‘I didn't make the Olympic team, and that was one of my biggest goals. So it was definitely a hard moment for me that I really internalized. I didn't talk to anyone on my team. It was a disappointing and heartbreaking moment. It's hard to describe what type of feeling I had besides heartbreaking. I mean, to put it in perspective, my goal from the moment I started playing a sport, any sport, was to be an Olympian, because my mom was an Olympian.’

‘It was something that was always watched and admired in my family, still even me to this day. An Olympic athlete is the creme de la creme of what they do. So for me to win a gold medal, or to win any medal, would be leaps and bounds ahead of Grand Slams because that was always something I aspired to.’

‘In October, I went to the Women's Sports Foundation Gala dinner. I was around all these great women athletes. And I met all these different people from different sports, from X Games to Extreme Sports to the regular run-of-the-mill sports of track, swimming, you name it. It was just such a wow factor for me to see gold medalists, things like that. Not only that, after the dinner was done, we literally sat down and ate pizza.’

‘I was chilling (with them) and freaking out, even though I might be a little bit more famous, because tennis is the best-known women’s sport. If you walked up to anyone in the street and said, “Name me three women athletes,” they'd probably name tennis players. We're the biggest sport to play. But for me, I was in awe of (the Olympians) because I was thinking:  I want what you have. So to put it into perspective:  that was my feeling of what an Olympian is and that's what I was dealing with in the heartbreak moment.’

It will be disappointing if Vandeweghe never gets the chance to take part in an Olympics. Happily, she will still only be 28 when Tokyo 2020 comes around, so maybe that will be her year.