Coco Gauff fought back from a set down and saved two match points in the second-set tiebreak to defeat No. 5 seed Mirra Andreeva 2-6, 7-6 (7), 6-2 in 2 hours, 19 minutes on Arthur Ashe Stadium on Wednesday. The win sends her to the US Open semifinals for the second time and for the first time since winning the 2023 title.<\/p>\n
US Open:\u00a0Scores<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Order of play<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Draws<\/a><\/p>\n When all hope appeared lost after Andreeva put forth another of her patented backhand passing shots to bring up a second match point — on her own serve no less — Gauff maintained her belief.<\/p>\n “Just believing is all I can do. The game may not always show up, but I can control the belief in myself,” Gauff said in her post-match press conference. “Even if it’s delusional. I think the more instances that I keep showing up and being successful in those moments, maybe the delusion will be more factual.”<\/p>\n Gauff may call it delusional, but her results say there may be a method to her madness. Gauff improved to 6-0 against Andreeva, with three of those wins coming from a set down. She has 12 comeback wins this season, tied with Jessica Pegula for most on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz.<\/p>\n Gauff has now won 11 straight matches overall and 20 of her last 22 dating back to Wimbledon, reaching four consecutive semifinals in that span. She’ll face No. 2 seed Elena Rybakina — who will rise to World No. 1 on Monday — next in what will be their third meeting. The head-to-head is tied 1-1.<\/p>\n With Gauff advancing to join Aryna Sabalenka, Rybakina and Pegula, it marks only the second time in the Open Era that the Top 4 seeds have made the US Open women’s singles semifinals. The only other occurrence came in 1975, when Chris Evert, Virginia Wade, Martina Navritilova and Evonne Goolagong Cawley comprised the last four.<\/p>\n It’s the first time it’s happened at any Slam since Wimbledon 2009, when Dinara Safina, Serena Williams, Venus Williams and Elena Dementieva all advanced.<\/p>\n Fortune favors the bold<\/p>\n While saving two match points was the most critical aspect of Gauff’s victory, it’s what happened earlier in the tiebreak that set the stage for the American’s eventual triumph.<\/p>\n Holding a slight 4-3 lead, Gauff and Andreeva embarked on a 39-shot rally (yes, 39) in what almost felt like a must-have point for both players. In the end, fortune favored the bold, as Gauff snatched the point with a textbook drop shot winner that sent the crowd into a frenzy.<\/p>\n Hindsight is 20\/20, but if Andreeva could do it over again, she would’ve taken more chances — particularly in the tiebreak.<\/p>\n “Maybe risk more, I guess,” Andreeva said in her post-match press conference. “I think at that moment, I kind of just wanted to make a rally or a longer point. I think if I would’ve gone for something riskier to see what would have happened — maybe that would be the only thing I would change.”<\/p>\n Numbers sometimes lie<\/p>\n Gauff hit 12 double faults, landed just 59% of her first serves and won a mere 38% of her second-serve points. She hit almost double the number of unforced errors (42) than winners (22).<\/p>\n But she won.<\/p>\n Sometimes numbers don’t tell the full story, and that was the case Wednesday, when Gauff overcame adversity and then put things in perspective by once again looking at how far she’s come in the past 12 months.<\/p>\n “In the grand scheme of things, I’m definitely sitting here with a different mindset and perspective than I was last year,” Gauff said. “If anything, it inspires me to keep working, as I see how much I have improved in a year. So I’m like, “Okay, if I keep putting in the work and keep refining things — I think my serve has definitely gotten better, even though it didn’t show up well (today), but it’s okay. It will show up tomorrow.’<\/p>\n “This is probably my worst (serving) match with 12 doubles in a three-setter. I probably would’ve taken that last year.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coco Gauff fought back from a set down and saved two match points in the second-set tiebreak to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[185,33],"class_list":["post-70097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-coco-gauff","tag-coco-gauff","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70097","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=70097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}