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2022 US Open - Previews

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Coco Gauff shouts out City Girls in a press conference interview. The tennis champion has is setting trends and setting records as she makes her WTA Top 10 debut in singles when rankings are updated on Monday, September 12.

When Gauff was asked about the on-court gestures made during her victory against Shuai Zhang at US Open, she explained that the one resembling a “throat slash” is merely a City Girls “period!”

“That was a City Girls’ ‘period,’” Gauff explained. “It’s a City Girls summer. Period. That’s what it is,” Gauff told the press. The reporter evidently confused by her response, Gauff goes on to say, “JT, Yung Miami, you don’t know? You see I got my long nails.”

The young tennis player says as a nod to the City Girls’ influence on her style choices for the match.

Gauff also cleared any confusion about her on-court gestures on social media in a sense deleted tweet.

“It wasn’t meant to come off any other way,” Gauff wrote on Twitter. “I had a city girls song stuck in my head the whole match. So I was saying PERIODT in my head.”

Gauff has had a wonderful season this year. Her spot on the WTA Top 10 was secured following her run to the US Open quarterfinals. She will become the youngest player to do so at 18 years old since 17-year-old Nicole Vaidisova in 2006. Gauff is also the youngest American to achieve the feat since Serena Williams at age 17 in 1999.

In addition to making the last eight at the US Open, Gauff was highlighted by her first Grand Slam final at Roland Garros. She also advanced to the semifinals of the WTA 250 Adelaide International and WTA 500 bett1open (Berlin) and reached the quarterfinals at WTA 1000 events at the Qatar TotalEnergies Open (Doha), National Bank Open presented by Rogers (Toronto) and WTA 500 Mubadala Silicon Valley Classic (San Jose).

This is the second major ranking milestone for Gauff this season. She earned the WTA World No.1 Doubles Ranking in August, where she became the second-youngest player in history to achieve this feat.

Check out the clip from Gauff’s press conference below: