Coco Gauff Reaches US Open Semifinals After Thrilling Comeback
Coco Gauff walked into Arthur Ashe Stadium as the defending US Open champion. For a long stretch on Tuesday in New York, she looked nothing like it.
She trailed Mirra Andreeva 2–6, 3–4. She had never seen a break point in the opening set. She faced two match points in a second-set tiebreak that felt like it might decide far more than a place in the semifinals.
And then the 20-year-old American did what champions do. She refused to go away.
Andreeva’s fast start
Andreeva, the fifth seed, came out blazing. She snapped up the first four games of the match, striking cleanly and dictating the rallies while Gauff sprayed errors.
The numbers told the story of that opening set: Andreeva finished it with just five unforced errors. Gauff piled up 14. She never earned a single break point. The 2–6 scoreline felt almost generous.
The defending champion looked rushed, out of rhythm, and a step behind the Russian teenager’s tempo.
A knife-edge second set
Gauff needed something to disrupt Andreeva’s control. She found it in the second set, not with sudden dominance, but with stubborn resistance.
The pair traded breaks twice, each time Gauff clawing back just as Andreeva threatened to surge away again. The rallies grew longer, heavier, more physical. Gauff’s athleticism began to bite into Andreeva’s baseline patterns, yet the Russian refused to blink.
The set marched inevitably toward a tiebreak.
That breaker turned into a test of nerve. At one stage, the two produced a 39-shot rally, a brutal exchange that ended with Gauff drilling an accurate backhand to take the point. It felt like a turning point, a statement that she was ready to stay as long as it took.
Still, Andreeva earned two match points. Twice, Gauff stood on the edge of defeat. Twice, she held her ground.
She saved both match points, wrestled back control of the tiebreak, and edged it 9–7. The roar from the stands said everything: the titleholder was alive, and the match had flipped.
Champion’s close
Once Gauff dragged the contest into a deciding set, the momentum finally cracked in her favor.
In the third game, Andreeva’s serve faltered. Gauff broke for the first time in the match, a breakthrough that landed like a gut punch to the Russian’s hopes. The American’s forehand, erratic early on, began to find its range.
From there, Gauff accelerated. She tightened her patterns, stepped inside the baseline, and began to dictate. At 4–2, she broke again, this time to love in the seventh game, stamping her authority on the contest at last.
Serving for the match, she didn’t hesitate. A forehand sealed the 2–6, 7–6 (9–7), 6–2 victory, a scoreline that barely captures the jeopardy she survived.
Rybakina awaits
The win sends Gauff back into the US Open semifinals, where she will face second seed Elena Rybakina.
After saving two match points and grinding through a 39-shot rally in the tightest moment of the match, Gauff now walks into a showdown with one of the game’s most formidable servers.
She arrived in New York as the defending champion. After this escape, she stays as something more dangerous: a defending champion who has just been reminded how thin the line between exit and glory can be.
