"I think I've kind of reached basically almost the best mentality I can get to," Gauff said. "You always can improve. But right now I feel like the way I'm acting and the way I kind of feel inside—you can kind of fake it till you make it. But I'm not faking it, at least right now."
How she's able to get to that mentality in her first-ever Grand Slam main draw is anyone's guess, but, while another breakout star, Bianca Andreescu, is dedicated to a pre-match practice of "creative visualization," Gauff's strategy is quite different.
"I kind of just watch YouTube videos before my match," she says. "It gets me in a laughing spirit or whatever. Right now I'm going to keep everything the same because it's been working."
What specifically does she watch on YouTube?
"I watch makeup tutorials, I watch vlogging, those kind of social experiments. Right now, I don't know how you pronounce it, UDY ... " she said. "They just do a bunch of pranks. It kind of keeps me laughing. Whatever YouTube recommends me, I kind of watch."
Here, for the curious, is the latest UDY video:
