It’s a little astounding to think Coco Gauff is still a work in progress, despite already achieving so much in her relatively short career.
The 20-year-old American has now won a Grand Slam, two WTA 1000 titles and now the year-end championships, capturing the title at the WTA Finals Riyadh presented by PIF on Saturday.
Gauff is now among only a handful of players to claim tournament victory at each of those three levels before turning 21, since the WTA’s introduction of the Tier format in 1990.
Saturday’s Riyadh final between two extremely gifted young players who have hit form while still trying to work out the intricacies of their respective games made for an appropriate encounter.
Both Gauff and Zheng Qinwen have showed remarkable rates of improvement over the past few months, but for the former, the deficiencies arguably came under much bigger scrutiny, and this week’s triumph has been a testament to her poise.
Finishing 2024 with a win-loss record of 54-17 at WTA level, including the Olympics and team events, this is Gauff’s career-high for WTA match-wins in a calendar year.
It both reflects Gauff’s age and potential, that this year’s win at the WTA Finals can be seen as a platform for coming seasons, in trying to cultivate a more complete game.
But in order to do that, and go through the numbers, we first have to understand it. Ultimately, the primary nature of Gauff’s game is attritional, extracting the absolute maximum from her exceptional court coverage.
One statistic is particularly illuminating — coming into Saturday’s final, Gauff was the only Riyadh qualifier to have played over 1000 rallies with 10 or more shots in WTA matches this year (1,211 in total).
Among the eight qualifiers for the year-end event, Gauff’s total of points with 10 or more shots was well ahead of the next most, Jasmine Paolini (766).
As ever, you have to adequately weigh up volume with efficiency, and Gauff stood up in this respect. Among the players with 200 or more such points this year, the average percentage of points won was 46.2%.
While Iga Swiatek led in this sample at an almost absurd 55.1%, Gauff was still winning those points at an above average rate, claiming 47.2% of points with 10 or more shots.
Zooming out, when the primary intent is ultimately to outlast the opponent, minimizing errors becomes a critical element in that kind of game – which is arguably…