For the second time since her 2023 US Open championship run, a young Coco Gauff in Arthur Ashe Stadium is taking the internet by storm.
On Thursday, a social media user named Isaac took to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, to share a photo of Gauff watching Venus Williams’ first-round match against Bethanie Mattek-Sands at the 2012 US Open.
Gauff shared the photo to her own followers, writing “if this isn’t proof that your dreams are closer than you think, then idk [I don’t know] what is.”
It was immediately a hit: Gauff’s posts about the moment have been viewed more than 1.7 million times.
She was also amazed that someone had found the old photo and spotted her in the background above Williams’ left shoulder, calling the moment “so cool.”
To make the moment even better, Gauff had no idea she was ever caught on camera, even though she said she definitely wanted to make it on the big screen at the time.
Even though she had dreams, little did that 8-year-old know during that changeover that she would lift the trophy at her home Grand Slam 11 years later. She also couldn’t have known that a video of her dancing to Carly Rae Jepsen’s hit song “Call Me Maybe” on Arthur Ashe Kids’ Day, too, would go viral, all proving that anything is possible.
“I don’t even know if that little girl, she had the dream, but I don’t know if she fully believed it. As a kid, you have so many dreams. As you get older sometimes it can fiddle away,’” Gauff said in her championship press conference.
“Honestly, I felt like I lost a little bit of the dream as this journey has gone [on]. I would tell her, ‘Don’t lose the dream. Keep having fun.’ As you can see in the video, I loved being on Ashe, whether it was in the crowd or on the court.”
Gauff gives the Williams sisters a lot of credit for her success, as she saw from a young age that Black women could reach the top of the sport. Now, the world No. 3 continues to share the importance of representation in tennis.
“[Venus and Serena] are the reason why I have this trophy today, to be honest. They have allowed me to believe in this dream growing up. There wasn’t too many Black tennis players dominating the sport. It was literally, at that time when I was younger, it was just them that I can remember,” Gauff said during the same press conference.
“Obviously, more came because of their legacy. So it made the dream more believable. But all the things that they had to go through, they made it easier for someone like me to do this.”
