Coco Gauff gives Miami Heat a shout-out at Roland Garros

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Want to know the sign of a true sports fan? Just listen to Coco Gauff, after her topsy-turvy opening win at Roland Garros on Sunday.

The 18-year-old American had just completed a 7-5, 6-0 win over tricky Canadian qualifier Rebecca Marino on Court Simonne-Mathieu. She kept her cool throughout the tightly contested opening set, and didn’t let a soft warning for coaching rattle her during the second set.

But mention the Miami Heat, and that’s a different story.

Growing up in South Florida, the American is a longtime Heat fan—she regularly tweets her support for the team and follows their results even while traveling the world on tour. But because of time zone differences, she said she hasn’t been able to watch much of the Heat’s Eastern Conference Final battle with the Boston Celtics.

“The games are always at like 5 a.m., French time!” she said, grinning during her on-court interview. “But every morning when I wake up, like this morning, the first thing I did is check if the Heat won, and we did.

“I hope that maybe in two weeks, I can be in the finals and the Heat can be winning the championship.”

Did you catch that? Not the part about the Heat reaching the final, or that Gauff has alerts on for their results—it’s all about the sentimental “we” that she uses to refer to her favorite team. There’s no bandwagon here, Gauff is Heat Nation for life.

Afterwards, Gauff spoke more about her love for basketball during her post-match press conference. It’s a passion that she picked up as a child from her dad and longtime coach, Corey Gauff, a former Division I basketball player for Georgia State.

Coco herself played the sport throughout her junior tennis career—but her defense-minded basketball game was the total opposite of her attacking tennis style.

“The year I made the final of US Open juniors, I was still playing basketball and track at the same time,” she said. “It was just so interesting playing a team sport, and I think that it taught me the importance of not being too harsh on yourself.

“Sometimes I am almost too harsh on myself and critique myself too much. And having teammates tell you, ‘It's okay, you're good,’ on the court, it taught me to try to be my best teammate and it's something that I try to remember.”

"I was really good on defense. I couldn't shoot to save my life, but defense I was on... I was a Draymond Green. No offense to him," she added with a laugh.

The No. 18 seed will try to keep the wins coming as she takes on Alison van Uytvanck in the second round on Wednesday. Gauff is aiming for another deep run at Roland Garros, where she reached her first Grand Slam quarterfinal last year.

But before then, she will probably be glued to her phone: the Heat play the Celtics in Game 4 tonight, and tip-off is at 2:30 a.m. Paris time.