Coco Gauff made a sweet reference to a fan who fell ill during her match against Belinda Bencic at the DC Open, using the moment to encourage the audience to take CPR training.

World No. 7 Gauff has had a good run so far at the WTA 500 event in Washington. The American is seeded third at the tournament and has so far won against Hailey Baptiste and sixth seed Bencic to reach the semi-final, where she will face eighth seed Liudmila Samsonova.

The 19-year-old also showed her kind-heartedness in her quarter-final match against Bencic, as she checked with the referee about a fan in the crowd who had fallen ill.

Speaking in her on-court interview after the match, Gauff made light of the situation by joking about the fact that she had recently undertaken a CPR lesson.

"I just took a CPR class so if they needed me to jump in I was ready," she said, "I have my certification."

Although Gauff quickly added that she knew there were professional medics in the vicinity, it was clear that she would have been willing to help had it been necessary.

"I did ask the ref if it was cardiac, I wasn't, I mean I'm sure there's more professional people out here but she said it wasn't cardiac so then that's when I realised that, you know, the person probably will be ok," she added.

The young player went on to encourage the crowd to also take the class in case of emergencies where it could be necessary, saying it only takes a short amount of time to complete.

"Literally when I came from Wimbledon, I booked it on the flight and it only took me 90 minutes so everybody in here should take the class, it's really informative," she said.