Gauff Beats Pegula in Three Sets to Open WTA Finals
Coco Gauff beat fellow American Jessica Pegula 6-4, 6-7 (5-7), 6-2 in her opening match at the WTA Finals, the season-ending event for the top eight players on the women's tour. The match was played at Indian Wells in California.
Gauff won the first set 6-4. Pegula levelled by taking the second 7-5 in a tiebreak, a short decider played when a set reaches 6-6. The third set was where Gauff pulled away, winning it 6-2. WTA Tennis described it as a dominant third set.
The win puts Gauff at 1-0 in Group 1. The eight players are split into two round-robin groups of four, where everyone plays everyone else once. The top two in each group reach the semi-finals, which means a 1-0 start is a useful one. Gauff plays Linda Noskova next, while Pegula faces Marta Kostyuk.
Gauff is the No. 4 seed and Pegula is the No. 5 seed. Seeding is the ranking that keeps the strongest players apart in the early rounds, so these two were always likely to meet in the group stage. This was their 11th meeting. Gauff has now won three in a row against Pegula, all of them this season. Her August win in the Cincinnati Open final was her only title of the year before this event.
Gauff, 22, is the defending champion. She won the 2024 title in Riyadh, beating Zheng Qinwen in a deciding tiebreak. This is her fifth consecutive WTA Finals, the youngest player to reach that mark since Martina Hingis in 2000. She last played at the China Open in early October.
Pegula had a strong season of her own. She won titles in Dubai and Charleston, reached the semi-finals of the Australian Open and US Open, and made five finals in total. She was the runner-up at the 2023 WTA Finals, losing the final to Iga Swiatek of Poland.
The other opener in the group was a close-to-one-sided affair. Noskova beat Kostyuk 6-2, 6-4. Noskova won all four of her break points, meaning all four chances she had to take Kostyuk's serve. BBC Sport reported that Kostyuk received a late call-up after world No. 1 Elena Rybakina withdrew with illness. Rybakina leads the tour with 54 wins this season, four more than Pegula.
Gauff's footwork seemed to take a toll. Reuters reported that she shredded her shoes during the win.
