Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula will square off in an All-American final on Sunday at the Wuhan Open in China.
The sixth-seeded Pegula snapped No. 1 seed Aryna Sabalenka’s unbeaten streak at the WTA 1000 tournament and rallied for a 2-6, 6-4, 7-6 (2) victory over the Belarusian in Saturday’s first semifinal.
The third-seeded Gauff followed that up by sweeping the last four games to finish off a 6-4, 6-3 win against nemesis and No. 7 seed Jasmine Paolini of Italy.
Pegula holds a 4-2 head-to-head lead against her former doubles partner, but Gauff won the most recent meeting in straight sets at last season’s WTA Finals.
“It’ll be awesome playing Coco in a final here,” Pegula said. “We know each other so well. There’s no secrets — we know what we’re going to try and do and what our gameplans are. It’s just going to be who can execute it the best.”
Added Gauff, “Jess is so dangerous, especially on hard courts. It’s going to be a tough, interesting final.”
Sabalenka, a three-time Wuhan champion, was 20-0 at the tournament and appeared on her way to No. 21 after breaking Pegula’s serve four times to win the first set.
Pegula evened the match but fell behind 5-3 in the deciding set before breaking Sabalenka’s serve in the ninth and 11th games and cruising in the tiebreak. Sabalenka had won 19 consecutive tiebreaks.
“I can’t believe I came back and won that,” Pegula said in her on-court interview. “I was clearly very nervous trying to serve it out — lost my timing, lost my rhythm, trying to go for too much — but I bounced right back in the tiebreak. I stay super-present, play the next point, move on and try to think about my strategy and what I need to focus on.”
Pegula had been 0-29 against top-10 opponents in her career when dropping the first set. It was her seventh three-set win in her past eight matches.
Gauff has not dropped a set all week, losing only 16 games — fewest in tournament history — to reach the final. She completed her victory over Paolini in one hour and 22 minutes.
Paolini had won their three previous meetings this year at Cincinnati, Rome and Stuttgart.
Their unusual match on Saturday featured 11 consecutive service breaks — the last five games of the first set and the first six of the second.
–Field Level Media
