Tennis champ Coco Gauff just won big at the 2025 French Open—and did so with a winning manicure to match. On June 2, Gauff handily beat Ekaterina Alexandrova of Russia to advance to the quarterfinals and seemingly wore one of the biggest manicure trends of the season: cat-eye nails. Opting for an almond shape and dark navy color, the shiny metallic look complimented her New Balance tennis dress nicely.
With nails so cool, we can’t help but draw comparisons to another (fictional) tennis icon: Tashi Duncan from Challengers. Played by Zendaya, Tashi wore a French manicure in the tennis drama’s flashback scenes. According to hair-and-makeup department head Fernanda Perez, the look was intentionally trendy to reflect her youth.
“That was Zendaya’s idea,” Perez previously told Glamour. “When we presented her the mood board, I said, “Okay, let’s talk about Tashi’s nails because it’s a detail and we can use them to show time passing. Maybe at the beginning when she is more girlish, she can have some pastel nails. Then when she’s in the middle of her crisis, something more neutral. And then go for a nude when she’s older.” And then Zendaya said, “We could do a French manicure when she’s young, because I remember I loved French manicures when I was younger.’”
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At 21-years-old, Gauff is one of the youngest tennis champions in history—and certainly reflected her own style with her hypnotic nails. Sometimes called velvet nails, cat-eye nails are created by using gel polish with metallic particles. You can create different designs using a magnet, which moves the metals around in the polish to get that unique shimmer effect.
The similarities don’t stop there: Gauff also celebrated her win with a hyped-up exclamation that’s very much giving Tashi’s viral “Come on!” battle cry from the Challengers trailer.
Last year, Coco Gauff gave a review of Challengers on Instagram Live, calling it “great”—although she called out some of the CGI used for the tennis-ball movements. “The tennis actually wasn’t bad in the movie,” Gauff said at the time, according to Teen Vogue. “There is a CGI ball, but the actual strokes and stuff were actually pretty damn [accurate].”
Although she seriously questioned Tashi’s personal decisions, she did find similarities to the character when its comes to her competitive nature. “Tashi is a trash human being. No, she is not a trash human being, but let’s just say she is a villain,” Gauff said. “I didn’t know if it’s wrong, but I kind of see myself in Tashi.”
