Monica Puig Marchán is a Puerto Rican former professional tennis player. She is the first Puerto Rican in history to win a gold medal at the Olympics while representing Puerto Rico, having done so in 2016 at the women's singles event. She is also a Central American and Caribbean champion and Pan American silver medalist. Her quick rise to success started in Florida. Although she was born in San Juan, she moved to Miami with her family as a child. At the age of 6, her mother, who played tennis in high school, gave Puig her first tennis racket, and she started playing at a small park in Doral. By 8, she was already playing in tournaments, and her parents decided to homeschool her so that she could have more time to dedicate to the sport. Her early dedication to the sport meant that she had to make sacrifices at a young age, missing out on birthday parties, time with friends, and even family events. At 16, Puig went pro, and by 17 she made the Australian Open and French Open finals. As her career progressed, she started to travel more frequently to Puerto Rico to visit her sponsors. According to an interview that she had, “tennis brought [her] back to Puerto Rico, brought [her] back to [her] roots. Kind of made [her] fall in love with the island all over again and, uh, it gave [her] more opportunity to be with [her] family.” It was during that time that she also noticed that she was one of very few Latinas playing tennis professionally. But that didn’t stop her. At the age of 22, when she beat Angelique Kerber from Germany, at the Rio Olympics, she dropped to her knees and the crowd chanted, “¡Sí, se puede!” (Yes, we can!) Puig eventually retired in June 2022 due to the cumulative effects of repeated injuries she sustained throughout her career.

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