Coco Gauff secured a semi-final spot at the 2024 WTA Finals after overcoming her nemesis, Iga Swiatek, in her second round-robin match.
The young American faced Swiatek 12 times before this meeting and the H2H has been far from in her favor. In reality, it has been quite catastrophic, as Gauff managed to win only one match against the Pole before.
Coming with this record into their 13th match, the 20-year-old certainly knew who she was standing up against, but she also knew that Swiatek had plenty of troubles in her first match against Barbora Krejcikova.
After the match, the Polish player admitted to feeling rusty after not having played since the US Open, even though prior to the tournament, she stated she didn’t expect to feel that way.
On the other hand, Gauff started the event with a dominant win over Jessica Pegula, and confidence was certainly on her side in this match at the 2024 WTA Finals.
With both having a win from their first round-robin matches, this was not a must-win match for either, but a straight-sets win would send Gauff into the semi-finals, while Swiatek needed to win if she wanted to keep her year-end World No. 1 hopes alive.
The start of the match was very intense. Both players traded blows, with Gauff being the more aggressive player early on, working her way to four break points in the first five games.
As always, efficiency is crucial in tennis, and the 20-year-old wasn’t efficient early on in that first set. Because of that, after six games of play, the scoreboard in Riyadh showed 3-3.
However, Gauff wasn’t demotivated by that initial failure to convert break points, and she worked her way to even more. In the seventh game, she had two break points at 40-15 and converted the first one to lead 4-3.
Crucially, she held her serve after that to increase her lead to 5-3, and after another break of serve, the American player won the first set 6-3.
That was an important set even if she had lost the match, considering that for the round-robin format, every set won counts in case there is a tie between two or more players.
But Gauff didn’t come to the event to win sets. She came to win matches. Although she faced two break points in the opening game of the second set, she saved them both.
In the third game, though, she felt the pressure, hitting three consecutive double faults. That created plenty of trouble for her, as she was broken and 1-2 down in the second set.
She immediately responded by breaking back, and when leading 3-2, the 2023 US Open champion had two break points to go into a one-break lead.
But a bad sequence followed for Gauff, as she lost eight of the next nine rallies to fall behind 3-4. Luckily for her, she had more in her, winning three consecutive games to turn the second set around and win the match 6-3, 6-4, and she was delighted with her performance.
“It feels great. I knew going into it, despite our head-to-head, I had a lot of confidence. I felt like I was playing great tennis. Even when I was playing a bit sloppy, the games I lost were still going to deuce. They gave me confidence. I knew if I could stay solid, I’d have the chance to close out the match.”
“From the ground and return of serve. In the first set, I had like three straight games in a row with break points. I didn’t let it discourage me. I knew I’d get it eventually. Even In the last game, I missed two forehand returns in the net, and I told myself, ‘It’s ok, I’ll get the next one,’ and I did.”
This win means Gauff secured her semi-final spot at the 2024 WTA Finals and also that Aryna Sabalenka will finish the year as the World No. 1 player on the WTA Tour, as Swiatek can’t climb to that spot anymore.
