Coco Gauff opened the 2024 season with the title in Auckland.
And while there were ups-and-downs along the way, she finished the season just as she started, with another victory, by winning the WTA Finals at the year-end event in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Saturday.
It was a statement-making run for Gauff throughout the week, as she defeated the world’s top two ranked players, Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek, in the semifinals and in group play, respectively. Gauff then recorded a gutsy comeback performance against reigning Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the over-three-hour final for a 3-6, 6-4, 7-6 (2) win.
Gauff, the 2023 US Open champion, trailed 5-3 in the decider and was two points away from being the runner-up before she stormed back. She won the first six points of the tiebreak and then cemented her champion status on her third match point. It was the longest title match in WTA Finals history — as evident by Gauff’s reaction at its conclusion:
MAMBA MENTALITY ON FULL DISPLAY! 🐍👊@CocoGauff pulls off an epic comeback to defeat Zheng in a three set thriller and captures her first WTA Finals title! #WTAFinalsRiyadh pic.twitter.com/tkNWR5lx5P
— wta (@WTA) November 9, 2024
“At the end of the match, when I fell on the floor, I didn’t think I was going to do that,” Gauff later said. “I kind of made a promise to myself that I will only save that for Grand Slams, but honestly, the way the match went, I was like, ‘I’m just tired. I just want to lay on the ground.'”
Gauff earned a record-setting $4.8 million for winning the title — the largest paycheck for a WTA event in history — and she has now topped the $20 million mark in career earnings. She later told reporters she “knew it was some money” for winning the WTA Finals but didn’t know specifically how much. “That’s a lot of money,” she said before admitting she had no idea what she would do with it.
Gauff became the first American to win since Serena Williams in 2014, and the youngest player to hoist the trophy since Maria Sharapova in 2004, the year Gauff was born. According to the WTA, she joins only Swiatek as active players under 30 years old to have won a WTA title at every level. Pretty impressive for someone just out of her teen years, and considering many said she was having a down year.
“lol safe to say I beat the bad season allegations,” Gauff wrote on X.
Having famously thanked her haters during her immediately viral on-court speech in New York last year, Gauff had…
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