Tennis pro CoCo Vandeweghe comes from good stock, as they say. Her uncle Kiki was a professional basketball player who had a long NBA career — after being a star at UCLA. But it didn’t start there: CoCo’s grandfather was a New York Knick (and a doctor!) and her grandmother was 1952 Miss America Colleen Kay Hutchins. The late Miss America — Hutchins died in 2010 — would have been appalled at her granddaughter’s US Open antics in round 2.
Vandeweghe lost it in the heat and under the pressure. Being destroyed on the court by fellow American Bethanie Mattek-Sands, Vandeweghe went on a racket rampage that looked more like a 3-year-old’s outburst than the conduct of a professional tennis player — especially one performing on the world’s biggest stage. The Miss America title famously sought (at least in 1952!) the type of person who comports herself with dignity and class, qualities Miss Hutchins displayed in full. With her outsize display of unsportsmanlike conduct, the 23-year-old CoCo Vandeweghe has surely made herself ineligible to compete for any prize that values grace or fortitude. And she won’t win the US Open either — losing the match 6-2, 6-1. It was a shame to see. And at least Miss America 1952 didn’t have to.
