Coco Gauff Unveils ‘Twisted Net’ CG1 Sneaker Colorway For French Open

Competing at the French Open is nothing new for WTA #5 Coco Gauff. But competing at the French Open in her signature New Balance Coco CG1 offers an entirely fresh experience. She’ll do just that this month in the new Twisted Net colorway.

New Balance launched Gauff’s signature on-court sneaker—the only signature tennis shoe for a current player—in summer 2022. Since then Gauff has worn a variety of colorways of the silhouette across the U.S. Open, Australian Open and an array of other tournaments. Coming into the French Open, though, the Coco CG1 takes a twisted approach.

The Twisted Net design takes an artistic spin on the tennis net, New Balance says, using the concept of taking Gauff’s love of social media and warping the net found on a tennis court with cyberspace. By incorporating flashes of blues and greens reminiscent of French fashion, New Balance calls the design a “futuristic, edgy twist to Coco’s signature shoe.”

“I knew I wanted a version of the CG1s that were edgy and flashy heading into my summer tournaments,” Gauff says. “I’m a big fan of Marvel so I love that the Twisted Net colorway has a futuristic warped net design and bright yellows and blues that are going to make me pop on the court.”

MORE: The Complete History of Signature Shoes in Tennis

In a sport that made signature shoes popular more than five decades ago, the NB Coco CG1 has a uniquely contemporary place in sneaker history. Simply by having a signature style for a current female player isn’t the only thing that makes it different. The Coco CG1 comes in a mid-top height, retro aesthetic and with a carbon fiber plate.

Gauff signed with New Balance in 2018 at the age of 14 and her sudden rise to the upper echelon of the sport—she was playing on Wimbledon’s Centre Court in 2019 at age 15—gave New Balance reason to start thinking big. The signature model had been two years in the making, more a decision to celebrate Gauff’s future than her past.

“We looked at this opportunity to enter into a category that doesn’t have signature and have a female lead that,” Evan Zeder, New Balance head of tennis sports marketing, said last year. “It puts us at a different place and puts her at a different place. We are building off where she is going and not what she has done, using that as a starting place.”

The Coco CG1 became one of the first retail-accessible tennis shoes to feature a carbon fiber plate. “Carbon fiber has been one of those mystical ingredients in a lot of athlete-specific models,” says Josh Wilder, New Balance tennis product manager. “As carbon fiber has infiltrated the running scene over the past years, that was a big part of what we wanted to do in tennis. A bit of the challenge was how we make it work for tennis specifically.”

The brand’s innovation team created multiple footbeds with different geometries, tweaking until it worked with the lateral movements of the sport, taking the final four concepts to a fit test with Gauff. Landing on the ultimate solution was the “Eureka moment” for the product team, especially with Gauff saying it gave her a sense of springiness.

Wilder says the Energy Arc technology is a carbon fiber plate that interacts with the softer FuelCell foam, all encased in rubber with strategic midsole voids to “allow the carbon fiber to spring back to give energy you need for marathon matches you might be playing.”

“I love to be explosive on court, so the new Energy Arc and FuelCell combination gave me a super responsive feel that was comfortable and felt super light,” Gauff said at the time of the shoe’s launch. “I honestly feel like it is going to help my ability to hit high balls and stay fresh.”

The upper technology on the unisex shoe uses the unique color blocking popular in the ’90s, but with a FitWeave Lite technology borrowed from the basketball team and seen on the TWO WXY V2. Early on, Gauff was drawn to translucent materials and the FitWeave Lite has that same translucency.

“This style,” Gauff says, “was meant to offer the best in tennis technology but be able to be worn off-court as well.”

Along with the strong slate of on-court colorways we’ve seen from New Balance, 2023 also saw the release of the first lifestyle-focused colorway of the Coco CG1, a yellow tennis ball-inspired design. As New Balance remains focused on Gauff and the Coco CG1, expect plenty more in 2023, even if a Twisted Net is the heart of the French Open.