Coco Gauff has a story. It started when Chris Eubanks, her close friend, called her a few days before the start of the 2024 Paris Olympics. Eubanks nominated Gauff to serve as the female flag bearer for the United States at the opening ceremony. The athletes have voted, he tells her. She’s won. The tears start to flow.

Gauff, 20, the defending U.S. Open champion and one of the biggest stars in American sport, is proud and amazed and humbled that a young Black woman from what she described as a “predominantly White sport” would end up holding the American flag for the biggest moment of the world’s largest sporting event.

She knows this isn’t about just about her. During her lifetime, Black Americans have become some of the biggest stars in tennis and in some cases have transcended the sport, especially in the U.S.

“Each one of them would tell you that Serena and Venus has played some part in their story,” she says, paying homage to the ground-shifting Williams sisters, who changed tennis as arguably no one else has before or since. She says there are so many more who bear mention too, including Arthur Ashe and Althea Gibson.

“They’ve all played some part of our story.” Read more below.