MELBOURNE, Australia — To hear CoCo Vandeweghe tell it, she just might have followed family tradition and become a basketball player if the girls on her team in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., had been more understanding.
Her grandfather Ernie and her uncle Kiki played in the N.B.A. She had some talent, too, and a flair for the dramatic, sinking a game-winner from half court in eighth grade against La Jolla Country Day School.
“Banked it in,” she said on Tuesday afternoon when we spoke at the Australian Open.
But Vandeweghe said that as a ninth grader, some of her basketball teammates were resentful that she missed some practices to play tennis.