#tbt: Andrea Petkovic debuts the “Petko Dance” at 2010 US Open

WATCH: Petkovic played her final matches this summer, including a first-round win at the 2002 Citi Open.

NEW YORK—Athlete. Writer. Dancer.

Andrea Petkovic did it all over nearly two decades on tour, and in the wake of her retirement, fans won’t soon forget the former world No. 9’s contributions to the tennis world—least of all her iconic "Petko Dance."

An old soul and voracious intellectual, Petkovic was also very much a millennial, one who gamely harnessed her generation’s bourgeoning social media revolution to document the earliest chapters of her life on tour in the early 2010s.

She launched her eponymous YouTube channel as she began a comeback from a traumatic 2008 knee injury. Mixing of slice-of-life with her penchant for absurdist comedy to gain an ardent following among hardcore fans, her “Petkorazzi” vlogs impressively presaging kind of content we now regularly see on official Instagrams and Tik Toks.

But it wasn’t until her trip to the 2010 US Open that her career as both player and personality really took off. She punctuated her first-round upset over former world No. 3 Nadia Petrova with impromptu victory dance, a celebration that became more elaborate with each win as she surged into the second week.

Petkovic capitalized on the meme—before “memes” were even common parlance—and took to YouTube to launch an "instructional" video for fans looking to learn the viral dance.

She carried that momentum into 2011 and reached three major quarterfinals to secure a Top 10 debut, vlogging much of her rise with the help of then-coach Petar Popovic and fellow players like Novak Djokovic and John Isner.

Petkovic may longer be on the tennis court, but may her YouTube channel be preserved in amber so that future generations not only learn the Petko Dance, but also emulate the joy Petko herself found in the journey.