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Coco Gauff was already a crowd favorite, but after sticking up for herself during the U.S. Open, her fans have never been more on her side.
Gauff, 19, won her match against Laura Siegemund on the first day of the U.S. Open, but not before confronting the umpire about her opponent's apparent rules violations. Gauff approached chair umpire Marijana Veljovic during the match, calling out Siegemund's slow play.
"She's never ready when I'm serving," Coco said about Siegemund. "She went over the clock, like, four times and you gave her a time violation once. How is this fair?"
Gauff went back and forth with the umpire, adding that she'd “been quiet the whole match” but had to speak up because things got “ridiculous.”
“I don’t care what she’s doing on her serve," Gauff said, "but on my serve she has to be ready.”
In a post-match interview, Gauff stood by her comments to the ump, saying she exercised patience in her response.
“I was really patient the whole match. She was going over the time since the first set. I never said anything. I would look at the umpire, and she didn’t do anything,” she said, according to the Associated Press. “Then obviously the crowd started to notice that she was taking long, so you would hear people in the crowd yelling, ‘Time!’”
As she spoke to Veljovic, the crowd cheered Gauff on, and the cheering didn't end with the match. Some on social media compared Gauff to Serena and Venus Williams, who have long called out unfair treatment on the court. In a press conference after her win, Gauff said she met former President and First Lady Barack and Michelle Obama, who lauded her for standing up for herself.
“[The former first lady] did say it's good to speak up for myself, so I think she was happy I stood up for myself,” Gauff said.
Related: Coco Gauff Is the Youngest Player to Make a Grand Slam Quarterfinal
