NEW YORK, Sept 9 \u2014 American Coco Gauff saved two match points to beat Russian fifth seed Mirra Andreeva 2-6 7-6(7) \u200b6-2 on Wednesday and reach the U.S. Open semi-finals after recovering from a dreadful opening set.<\/p>\n
The 2023 champion had none of her usual firepower at first and was on the ropes \u200cin the tiebreak before she flipped the script and closed out the match with a forehand strike, dropping her racket to the \u2060court in joy and relief.<\/p>\n
She faces second seed \u200bElena Rybakina in the last four.<\/p>\n
“The motto of \u2060the match was just to fight,” said Gauff.<\/p>\n
Andreeva looked completely at home in Arthur Ashe Stadium as she \u200csprinted through the first four \u200cgames, never allowing Gauff to set up a break-point chance in the opening set \u2060where the Russian had just five unforced errors to 14 \u2060from her opponent.<\/p>\n
Gauff, who took a break in the locker room between sets, took inspiration from her compatriot Frances Tiafoe, who recovered from two sets and a break down on Tuesday night to reach the semi-finals on the men’s side.<\/p>\n
“I just had to reset. I came out not feeling the ball, giving her too many free points,” said Gauff. “I was thinking about Frances Tiafoe and \u200chow he came back yesterday. And we all want to do well \u200bin front of this crowd.”<\/p>\n
Gauff finally found some momentum in the second set and was serving for the match in the ninth game when old issues with her serve resurfaced and she produced three double faults, allowing her opponent to break back.<\/p>\n
Undeterred, Gauff recovered her poise and deployed a perfectly placed backhand to win a 39-shot rally, twice saving match point before forcing the third set with a forehand shot to the corner that Andreeva could not contain.<\/p>\n
She kept up the \u200bpace from there and Andreeva flung her racket at her bench in disgust after dropping her serve in the third game \u200cof the decider. Gauff \u200cbroke her to \u2060love in the seventh game to put the contest completely out of reach.<\/p>\n
She faces a formidable foe in Rybakina, who claimed the top ranking with a win earlier in the day over Zheng Qinwen.<\/p>\n
Gauff and the Kazakh second seed have one win apiece in career head-to-head, with Rybakina winning their most recent encounter \u200cin the semi-finals in Toronto \u200blast month.<\/p>\n
“Elena – she’s the new world number one so it’s \u200cgoing to be a tough \u2060match,” said Gauff. “I’m \u200blooking forward to the battle. These are the moments you live for.”<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Amy Tennery in New York; editing \u200bby Clare Fallon)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK, Sept 9 \u2014 American Coco Gauff saved two match points to beat Russian fifth seed Mirra…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2879,2878,2881,1796,2880,53,54,2883,2884,50,2882,28,2877,2885,2369],"class_list":["post-70159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-cars","tag-classifieds","tag-homes","tag-international","tag-jobs","tag-local","tag-news","tag-radio","tag-salt-lake","tag-sports","tag-television","tag-tennis","tag-traffic","tag-utah","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70159","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=70159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}