This Adorable Video Of 8-Year-Old Coco Gauff Is Going Viral After Her Big US Open Win

Sunday was a long time coming for 19-year-old Coco Gauff. She became the youngest woman to win the US Open’s women’s single title since Serena Williams won it in 1999, and she admitted in the aftermath of her win that it did not yet “feel real” to her. No wonder. This tennis star had been on this path since she was a little girl and dreamed of competing in the US Open. In fact, it’s been just 11 years since she was dancing in the stands at the US Open as an 8-year-old girl. And a video of that sweet dance is going viral now that she has become a champion herself.

Gauff won her first major title, a Grand Slam against Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus, in the women’s singles division at this year’s US Open at Arthur Ashe Stadium. It was a huge deal for her, one she told TODAY on Monday took a minute to really understand. “I feel like it hit all at once because I didn’t want to tell myself it was match point on the match points, I didn’t want to start shaking. So when it happened and like, finally it was over, my previous matches (have) taken me like six, seven match points to win and that was on the first one so I was a little bit shocked and I couldn’t breathe either,” Gauff said of her winning moment, when she sat down on the court to shed tears of joy before going to hug her family.

Perhaps she was remembering how it felt to dance in the stands as an 8-year-old just over a decade ago wearing a tennis skirt.

Gauff wasn’t the only one to celebrate her big victory. None other than legendary tennis great Serena Williams herself took to Instagram to share a photo of the young tennis champ holding up her trophy alongside the message, “Ahhhhhh! Amazing! @cocogauff.”

This must have been another lovely moment for the young tennis star, who credits both Serena and Venus Williams as her inspiration for getting into the sport in the first place. When asked in a post-match press conference about seeing her name beside the two champions, Gauff said per Tennis 365, “They’re the reason why I have this trophy today,” she said. “To be honest, they’ve allowed me to believe in this dream. Growing up, there wasn’t too many just Black tennis players dominating the sport. It was literally at that time when I was younger, it was just them that I can remember.”

Now we have a small idea of what was going on in Gauff’s head as an 8-year-old at the US Open. Her future as a tennis star.