Coco Gauff Advances with Poise at US Open
Coco Gauff steadied herself, then surged. On a day when American hopes scattered across the draw took very different paths, the defending US Open champion walked back into the second week in New York with the poise of a player who now expects to be there.
The 22-year-old saw off Spain's Cristina Bucsa 6-3 6-4, a straight-sets win that looked routine on the scoreboard but was anything but straightforward in the early going. Down 3-1 in the opening set, Gauff tightened her game, raised her intensity and reeled off five of the next six games. The match flipped quickly, and once it did, Bucsa never truly recovered.
This is familiar territory now. For the fifth consecutive year, Gauff is into the last 16 at her home major. The weight that once felt suffocating in New York has become something she can carry, even bend to her will.
"I feel like I'm used to getting to the second week now. I woke up today and I was like 'oh we're already in round three'," she said afterwards, acknowledging the expectations that cling to every step she takes on American hard courts. Being the last home champion, the first American teenager to win here since Serena Williams in 1999, has turned every appearance into an event.
"There's expectations, being American, and I want to do well in front of the fans. Last year, I put so much pressure on myself. I'm enjoying the experience out here."
The numbers back up the feeling. Gauff, the 2025 French Open champion and the form player on the WTA Tour, has now strung together eight consecutive straight-sets wins at tour level. Yet the fourth round has been a ceiling at Flushing Meadows for the past two editions. Her response to adversity against Bucsa — recovering from that early first-set deficit and immediately breaking back after dropping serve to love in the second — suggested a player better equipped to break through that barrier.
While Gauff advanced, the day cut sharply the other way for two of her compatriots.
Madison Keys walked to the brink of a statement win, then froze. The 31-year-old led Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen 5-0 in the deciding set, held a match point, and still somehow left Arthur Ashe Stadium beaten 1-6 7-6 (7-3) 7-5, the air sucked out of the crowd as the final forehand drifted away.
It was a collapse she did not try to dress up.
"I obviously got off to a really good lead, and then I got really scared, like I couldn't swing [the racquet]," Keys admitted. "I felt like I couldn't play tennis anymore. It just felt like it was a much bigger deal than just playing a tennis match all of a sudden."
The tension was written all over her closing games. Zheng, the 2025 Australian Open champion, sensed it and refused to go away, rattling off seven straight games to complete a comeback that will linger for Keys far longer than for the spectators who watched it unravel.
For Keys, a US Open finalist in 2017 and a consistent second-week presence at the majors — she reached the fourth round at all three other Slams in 2026 — this defeat felt different. It sounded like a crossroads.
"I feel like I've been struggling for a while now. I'm going to have to make some sort of changes," she said. "I just kind of keep putting it off because that's how the tennis world works. It's just to the point where I actually need to do something about it."
On another court, Amanda Anisimova’s campaign ended with less drama but just as much frustration. Last year's runner-up, beaten in the 2023 final by world number one Aryna Sabalenka, went out in straight sets to 24th seed Anastasia Potapova, the Russian-born Austrian who punished every lapse.
Anisimova, 25, never settled. She dropped serve twice in the first set and four times in a chaotic second, her irritation with herself visible between almost every point. The clean, aggressive ball-striking that carried her to the final a year ago never arrived, and Potapova did not need a second invitation.
For all the disappointment, the American presence at this US Open still runs deep. Gauff leads a home charge that could see as many as five US women in the last 16, with Iva Jovic bidding to join Gauff, Jessica Pegula, Taylor Townsend and Emma Navarro in the fourth round.
On the men’s side, the stars and stripes are everywhere. Ben Shelton, Frances Tiafoe, Tommy Paul and Alex Michelsen have already booked their spots in the fourth round, with Learner Tien and Michael Zheng still to come. Six of the eight men’s last-16 matches could feature Americans, a prospect that would have seemed fanciful not long ago.
But the spotlight, as it so often does here, circles back to Gauff.
She has been the future of American tennis for years. Now she is its present — a reigning champion playing like the best in the world, trying to turn one home title into two while the noise around her grows louder with every round.
The question in New York is no longer whether she belongs at the top. It’s whether anyone can stop her from owning this fortnight again.
