Coco Gauff, the world No. 3, won the WTA 1000 event in Wuhan. This is her tenth career title, nine of which were won on hard courts, allowing her to match Serena Williams’ record for hard-court titles.
On her path to the title she defeated three players outside the top 50: world No. 91 Miyu Uchijima, No. 142 Shuai Zhang, and No. 57 Laura Siegemund.
In the semifinal she faced the world No. 8 Jasmine Paolini and also defeated her in straight sets.
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Significance of the victory and records
In the final, Gauff faced Jessica Pegula and became champion, winning in two sets – 6-4, 7-5.
The match lasted 1 hour 44 minutes. Gauff recorded four aces, while Pegula failed to convert on break points. Gauff registered eight double faults, compared with two by her opponent.
This victory marked Gauff’s tenth career title and her third at WTA 1000 events. She matched Serena Williams’ achievement for titles on hard courts and became one of the few to win both Chinese WTA 1000 events – Beijing and Wuhan.
Gauff also set the age record as the youngest finalist at WTA 1000 events in Beijing and Wuhan; she is currently 21 years and 207 days old. She also qualified for the year-end WTA Finals to be held in Riyadh in early November.
“I want to thank my team – these have been wonderful Asian swings. I’m going to call JC [Jean-Christophe Faurel, Gauff’s coach]. At first, he didn’t want me to come to this tournament because I had a tough US Open. But I had to prove that he was wrong. I’m a very stubborn person. So maybe he said this on purpose so that I could achieve a good result here”,
This moment is a testament to Gauff’s brilliant career and inspires American tennis to finish the season strongly.
