NEW YORK — After two American favorites were upset early on Saturday, Coco Gauff snapped the ominous trend in the late afternoon, beating unseeded Cristina Bucsa 6-3, 6-4 in Arthur Ashe Stadium to advance to the fourth round of the US Open.<\/p>\n
Playing each other for the first time in over three years, Bucsa jumped out to an early 3-1 lead in the first set, but Gauff broke back to tie it at 3-all. She then won the next three games to take the set, punctuated by a booming serve on set point that Bucsa couldn’t handle.<\/p>\n
They each held serve through six games in the second set before Gauff broke for the 4-3 lead. The 28-year-old Spaniard broke back to level it, but Gauff took the final eight points to book her spot in the Round of 16 for the fifth consecutive year.<\/p>\n
“It was way different playing in the day than at night,” Gauff said after the match. “I think I was decelerating a little bit, just because it’s a little bit faster. But once I was down that break, I just told myself I need to accelerate through my shots.<\/p>\n
“She’s a tricky player. She can sometimes speed it up and slow it down. So it was tough for me to get a rhythm, but I’m just happy with how I fought through even when I wasn’t playing my best.”<\/p>\n
Though the fourth seed made less than 50 percent of her first serves and double faulted six times, she won 20 of her 27 first-serve points. Her movement and defense were her hallmarks and gave her the edge, as per usual, converting four of nine break-point opportunities and winning 15 of 22 points at the net.<\/p>\n
“I think I was finally feeling the ball good, maybe the last two games of the match,” she added, “so I started to rip a little bit more returns and come in a little bit more. When I feel like I’m not feeling the ball that well, I play defensive. I think today was mainly defense, honestly, in the first set because I just wasn’t feeling that great.<\/p>\n
“Once I got my rhythm, then I was able to swing through a little bit more. And sometimes I need to just sacrifice some points just to hit through it, just to find my rhythm again. And I think that’s what I did.”<\/p>\n
Gauff, who won her first WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz title of the year in Cincinnati last month, has now won nine matches in a row, the last eight of which have come in straight sets.<\/p>\n
She’ll play either countrywoman Iva Jovic or Alexandra Eala for a spot in the quarterfinals. They’re playing the first night match in Arthur Ashe Stadium on Friday evening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK — After two American favorites were upset early on Saturday, Coco Gauff snapped the ominous trend…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[33,463],"class_list":["post-66633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us-open","tag-text","tag-us-open"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}