won the French Open<\/a> on clay, and she now has 11 career titles.<\/p>\nThe third-ranked Gauff served to save the second set at 5-3 down. She held and then broke the sixth-ranked Pegula to love for 5-5.<\/p>\n
Pegula\u2019s forehand volley at the net landed wide to give Gauff a first match point and, with Pegula on second serve, she clinched it with a forehand winner following a brief rally.<\/p>\n
\u201cWinning every match (in the tournament) in straight sets, I don\u2019t know if I\u2019ve done that before on a title run,\u201d Gauff said. \u201cI just felt like I was really proud of what I accomplished this week, regardless of the result today.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 31-year-old Pegula rallied to beat top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka in the semifinals. But this time she lost momentum and missed out on a 10th career title as Gauff became the second American to claim the Wuhan title after Venus Williams in 2015.<\/p>\n
It was their seventh career meeting and first in a final. Pegula leads 4-3 overall against Gauff, with whom she has won several WTA doubles titles.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I came on tour, you were one of the first people to be nice to me and welcome me with open arms. That really went a long way, so I appreciate you,\u201d Gauff told Pegula at the trophy ceremony. \u201cIt\u2019s great to finally play in the final against you. I hope for many more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gauff improved to 11-3 in finals; Pegula dropped to 9-11.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve spent a lot of time together and, even though I\u2019m a bit older, I always admire and respect her so much,\u201d Pegula said. \u201dShe\u2019s just so mature for her age.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP tennis: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/tennis<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WUHAN, China (AP) \u2014 Coco Gauff reeled off four straight games to beat Jessica Pegula 6-4, 7-5 and…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":298485,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[2477,2210,42777,21487,62,1464,67,132,68,46604],"class_list":{"0":"post-298484","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-aryna-sabalenka","9":"tag-coco-gauff","10":"tag-french-open-tennis-championships","11":"tag-jessica-pegula","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-tennis","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-venus-williams"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115363821886300784","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}