No. 4 seed Jessica Pegula took down No. 6 seed Coco Gauff 6-2, 5-7, 7-5 in an all-American quarterfinal battle Friday at the National Bank Open in Montreal.
The friends and doubles partners needed two hours and 21 minutes to decide who would advance to the semifinals at the WTA 1000 tournament. Pegula’s victory snapped Gauff’s six-match winning streak, which included the title at last week’s WTA 500 tournament in Washington.
Pegula improved to 2-1 all-time against Gauff. The pair had the top seed in the women’s doubles draw in Montreal, but after their match, they withdrew from that competition.
“That was a really long, tough match,” Pegula said in an on-court interview. “It’s always tough to play your doubles partner — you know exactly what you’re trying to do. It just came down to the wire and who was going to compete better.”
Pegula led the third set 3-1 and 4-2, but Gauff forged a comeback and won three straight games to take the lead. Pegula responded with three straight wins of her own, sweeping the final game.
Gauff had a 7-2 edge in aces but also committed nine double faults to Pegula’s four. Pegula also saved five of eight break points and converted five of eight opportunities to break Gauff.
Awaiting Pegula in the semifinals is top seed Iga Swiatek of Poland, who got past American qualifier Danielle Collins 6-3, 4-6, 6-2 for her 50th match win of 2023.
“I really wanted to play powerful, and I’m pretty happy that I managed to even increase the power in the third set,” Swiatek said. “For sure, I was looking for that. Today, I felt like I really needed to go even higher in terms of the intensity.”
Later Friday night, the other semifinal matchup was decided as No. 3 seed Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan won a marathon over 10th-seeded Daria Kasatkina of Russia 5-7, 7-5, 7-6 (8). Rybakina moves on to face 15th seed Liudmila Samsonova of Russia, who defeated 12th seed Belinda Bencic of Switzerland 6-4, 6-4.
Rybakina’s victory in Friday’s final match lasted 3 1/2 hours into early Saturday morning. The 2022 Wimbledon champion was broken three times in dropping the first set and four more times in the second, but fought back repeatedly by winning five break points of her own in the second set to even the match. The WTA Tour’s No. 4 player in the current rankings, Rybakina then grabbed a 3-0 lead in the final set before losing the next four games. After winning the next two, Kasatkina won the following two for a 6-5 lead before Rybakina forced the tiebreak.
Rybakina then had three match points leading 6-3, but lost them all and had to stave off a Kasatkina match point at 8-7 before taking the final three points of the grueling match. In all, the serving player won just 16 of 36 full-service games.
Samsonova handled her business in straight sets, serving up eight aces and winning a machine-like 29 of her 35 first-service points (82.9 percent). Unlike the other late match, there were only two service games lost — with Samsonova earning the break points each time.
Earlier in the day, Samsonova ousted No. 2 seed Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus in a Round of 16 match, 7-6 (2), 4-6, 6-3. Samsonova countered Sabalenka’s 13 aces with eight of her own and saved a whopping 11 of 13 break points.
Bencic also played earlier Friday, rallying past Czech seventh seed Petra Kvitova 6-7 (3), 6-3, 6-1.
–Field Level Media
