Fervent fans voice their dismay, claiming Coco Gauff has forsaken her fans. With frustration, they exclaim, “She used to chase victory on the court, but now it’s all about the next social outing or endorsement deal!” Their worry is palpable: “Coco’s lost in her own game now, and I pray it doesn’t spell the end of her career, but right now, it’s hanging by a thread…”

At the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., maybe the most prestigious nonmajor tournament on the global tennis tour, players conduct their warm-up routines on a patch of grass outside the stadium. Some toss medicine balls to their trainers, while others stretch with elastic bands. A few pedal lightly on upright bikes. One player throws a Frisbee.

Then Coco Gauff takes the field.

Gauff, who in September became the first American teenager to win the U.S. Open in nearly a quarter-century, grabs a football, sends a guy downfield, and uncoils a tight, 40-yard spiral, right into the receiver’s chest. Then she does it again. And again.

Gauff’s cannon is a flex. I see your toe-tapping a soccer ball and raise you a Patrick Mahomes bomb. Gauff, who grew up in the football hotbed of South Florida, takes tremendous pride in showing off her athleticism. “It’s not really for the girls,” Gauff tells TIME in early March, about a week before her 20th birthday. “I don’t think they care too much, especially the Europeans. They don’t know much about football.” Her throws are designed to mess with the men. “I do like to show, especially the American guys, that I can probably throw it just as far as them, if not farther,” says Gauff. “I love to get in the American guys’ heads.”

To her coach, former tour player and current ESPN commentator Brad Gilbert, Gauff’s live arm speaks to her still untapped potential. “When you see that, it’s almost like ‘Sh-t, she should be serving better,’” he says.

That’s quite a statement, considering that Gauff’s 125-m.p.h. delivery to Aryna Sabalenka at this year’s Australian Open was the fastest female serve in the tournament. That her game might just be scratching the surface of its greatness speaks to Gauff’s status as America’s potential next iconic, mononymous athlete. From Tiger to Serena to LeBron to … Coco?

Fans have forged a unique connection with Gauff, a function of both her achievements at a young age and her willingness to be vocal about sociopolitical issues. She struggled to meet early expectations on the court, fighting self-imposed pressures for years, but she finally eased her mind a bit last summer, thrilling the crowd in New York City as she nabbed her first Grand Slam win at the U.S. Open. Throughout the tournament, Gauff charmed her growing fan base. She supported the rights of climate protesters to disrupt her semifinal match. She mused on her anime infatuation, and, in her victory speech, she spontaneously thanked her online detractors for “adding gas” to her fire.

When Naomi Osaka withdrew from the 2021 French Open to tend to her mental health, Gauff was the first tennis player to message her with support. Late last year, when 18-time major champion Chris Evert revealed that her ovarian cancer had returned, Gauff was one of the few active players to reach out to her. “When people see an athlete with her level of fame and fortune having humility and empathy for people around her and awareness of world events, it sends a clear message,” Evert tells TIME. “She’s focused. She’s fearless. We need some leaders in the women’s game. She definitely will be one of them. If not the one.”

Gauff earned nearly $23 million in winnings and endorsements in 2023, making her the highest-paid female athlete in the world, according to Sportico, a sports-business publication. She has a momentous spring and summer ahead—the French Open starting May 26, then Wimbledon, then the Olympics, then her U.S. Open title defense beginning in August. “I always knew I wanted to try to win multiple Grand Slams,” says Gauff as an SUV rolls along I-10, en route from Indian Wells to L.A. for TIME’s Women of the Year gala. “Sometimes people get unmotivated after winning one. That hasn’t been a personal challenge for me.”

Gauff usually arrives ahead of schedule. She won a major while still in her teens, upset Venus Williams in the first round of Wimbledon at 15, and started walking at 9 months, skipping the crawling stage. When she was 3, she got out of her stroller and tried to catch up to her older cousins who were running around a track. She was too small to pass them. But she also refused to tire out. Her mother Candi, a former track-and-field star at Florida State, could spot athletic excellence. “That was the first inkling of like, ‘This is not normal,’” says Candi.

Before Coco turned 6, she and her dad Corey were watching Serena Williams win the Australian Open. Corey, a former college basketball player, called Williams the GOAT. “What’s a GOAT?” Coco asked. Greatest of All Time, he replied. “I want to be a GOAT,” she said. He bought her a pink Wilson racquet, and she spent hours hitting against her garage in Atlanta. The example of the Williams sisters drove her. “As a little girl, it was very important to see representation and see myself in players, especially in the field where it is predominantly white,” says Gauff. “I don’t think I would have had the belief I could do it if it wasn’t for them.”

When Gauff was 8, the family relocated to Delray Beach, Fla.—where Candi and Corey grew up—to be closer to expert tennis training. She’d be homeschooled, giving her more time to work on her game. She spent a few weeks a year in France at the academy run by Patrick Mouratoglou, Serena Williams’ coach from 2012 to 2022. At 10, she told Mouratoglou she wanted to win more Grand Slams than anybody. “She was crazy ambitious,” he says. “She was looking me in the eyes and was really sure about what she was saying.”

Life on the road could be isolating for a tween. Gauff missed going to school and hanging out with friends. When she was 12, at a tournament in France, she says, a group of Croatian boys threw orange peels at her and called her a monkey. She cried that night. “Then I just kind of got over it the next day,” says Gauff. “I just felt like that’s just something that people experience, which is not a great thing. They just probably didn’t grow up around other people that looked different. I don’t have any anger towards it. It was not an experience that defined me.”