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Coco Gauff’s serving woes followed her into the final week of the season, as the American’s title defence at the WTA Finals in Riyadh began with a bruising 6-3, 6-7 (4), 6-2 loss to her compatriot Jessica Pegula in their first match of the group stages.
Despite fighting hard and remaining competitive until the end, the third seed simply could not overcome her 17 double faults against an in-form Pegula, the fifth seed, who maintained her composure impressively after getting pulled into a final set by her struggling opponent and saved her best level for the closing stretch of the match.
Pegula’s victory could prove to be an important win in the Stefanie Graf group, with Aryna Sabalenka looming and favoured to advance from the group. Earlier on Sunday, the world No 1 opened her tournament with a confident 6-3, 6-1 win over Jasmine Paolini, the eighth seed. The victory was Sabalenka’s 60th of the season, the first time she has achieved this milestone.
Gauff’s serving difficulties have been the source of significant attention and discussion in recent months and here her second serve fell apart again. The reigning French Open champion twice served for the second set and held a set point at 6-5 before serving three consecutive doubles faults. Still, Gauff showed her mental toughness by forcing a final set and her cause was aided by some enormous speeds behind her first serve, which reached 128mph.
Pegula has found her best form of 2025 in the final months of the season, following up her semi-final at the US Open with semi-final and final runs in Beijing and Wuhan last month, and that confidence was on show in the closing set.
She received so little rhythm from Gauff, but she still continued to force herself inside the baseline and take the ball early off both wings in the most important moments, winning with quality, clear-headed tennis when it was most needed. Pegula will next tackle Sabalenka, her conqueror at the US Open, on Tuesday while Gauff will try to bounce back as she faces Paolini in a match she must win.
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Elsewhere, Jannik Sinner closed out a flawless week at the Paris Masters by defeating Félix Auger-Aliassime 6-4, 7-6 (4) to win his first Masters 1000 title of the year and fifth overall. Sinner, the second seed, did not drop a set all week in Paris and he will return to No 1 in the rankings. The year-end world No 1 will be determined in Turin this month between Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz at the ATP Finals, where Sinner is the defending champion.
