Follow us on Google Discover Coco Gauff will already be looking ahead to her title defence at the WTA Finals, which return to Riyadh next month.
Gauff won the WTA Finals in 2024, becoming the first American to achieve the feat since Serena Williams in 2014.
She defeated Qinwen Zheng in the final, ending her 2024 season with three titles following her success in Auckland and Beijing.
Gauff could now achieve the exact same feat this time around, having won at the French Open and Wuhan Open this year.
Jessica Pegula praised Gauff after losing their Wuhan Open final, with the tournament having represented the last WTA 1000 final of the season.
Photo by Robert Prange/Getty ImagesCoco Gauff tells the WTA what she doesn’t want them to do with the Finals in future
Gauff can now turn her focus to the WTA Finals, with Riyadh playing host for the second time as part of a three-year deal between the WTA Tour and the Saudi Tennis Federation.
Asked by Arab News if she thinks extending the deal would be a good decision from the WTA Finals, the American said: “I don’t know.
“Because my last three finals, I’ve been in three different places, I definitely don’t think we should go to different places every year.
“Now, I don’t feel like I’ve been on a tour long enough to know like if 10 years is the right thing or not, because I’ve played in three different years.
“And I definitely think that there’s benefit to keeping a tournament there for at least two or three years in a row.
“I think that it builds a culture of that tournament in that area, which can bring more attention and also allow fans to, if they want to go to plan their trips and things – I think that was the issue with the two previous WTA Finals before last year’s, it was announced pretty late.
“And I don’t think that the turnout was great because of that. So I definitely think that there’s benefit to having stability there.
“I definitely think that for Riyadh, it was smart to just do three years, just to test the waters and see how it goes, considering that there was never a women’s professional event there. But from a player perspective, it definitely seemed like it was successful.
“I don’t know how it was logistically and all that, but from my experience, it seems successful. So I wouldn’t mind coming back in the future for longer than three years.”
“I think sport has the power to do a lot of things and bring people together.”
Defending champion @CocoGauff reflects on the WTA Finals’ first staging in Riyadh and looks ahead to what the future may bring 📽️📰https://t.co/Q0Jwp8JrTp
— Reem Abulleil (@ReemAbulleil) October 12, 2025
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What Coco Gauff ‘didn’t expect’ about the WTA Finals Riyadh in 2024
The WTA Finals had previously been planned for a lengthy stay in Shenzhen, but the 10-year deal was cut short because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
From 2021 to 2023, the tournament had moved between Guadalajara, Fort Worth and Cancun, having had a home in Singapore from 2014 to 2018.
Last 10 WTA Finals champions
Riyadh now has the rights from 2024 to 2026, with Gauff saying of its debut last year: “I think sport has the power to do a lot of things and bring people together.
“And I felt like the energy was there when I was inside the stadium, that everyone was enjoying the tennis and coming together. People from all nationalities attending, some Americans, Chinese, everyone coming.
“I didn’t expect a lot of people to travel for the tournament, honestly. So, I was pretty impressed to see how many people came and I enjoyed the atmosphere.”
Whether or not Riyadh continues to host beyond 2026 remains to be seen, but Gauff clearly wants stability at this late stage of the season.
This year’s event takes place in the first week of November, with the 2026 season starting in the first week of January with the United Cup.