Generational summit

When it was done, she broke down and wept. This will happen when you're 15 years old and you look up, and here comes the poster on your bedroom wall walking toward you across the Wimbledon grass.

That was 39-year-old Venus Williams walking toward Cori “Coco” Gauff, and it was all too much, just too much. Generational moments don't often come so indelibly drawn, for one thing. And this one was drawn as boldly as any possibly could be drawn.

That a 15-year-old African-American girl would, at the high holy ground of their common world, be meeting the African-American woman who inspired an entire generation of young African-American women was magical enough. That she was doing it having beaten that inspiration at Wimbledon ...

Well. It was cosmic, sort of.

Here was Venus Williams, and here was Cori Gauff, who grew up idolizing her, and the former was the architect of her own defeat at the hands of the latter. Because without Venus and her sister Serena as guiding lights, would Cori Gauff even have been across the net from her? Would she ever have picked up a racket without watching Venus and Serena glide across the very same Wimbledon grass over which she now glides? Would she have ever dreamed of holding up that big ornate plate, had she not seen Venus and Serena hold it up so many times?

And so, yes, Cori Gauff wept Monday, overcme by the moment. At 15, she is the youngest person to qualify for Wimbledon in the professional era. At 15, she already has a 120 mph serve in her arsenal. It doesn't take much imagination to see her as, perhaps, the next great American tennis star.

This is how it works, you see. One generation comes along, grows up, grows old, leaves a legacy (if it's lucky) for the next generation to honor and advance.

 And so on. And so on.