Coco Gauff beats Aryna Sabalenka in the US Open final

19-year-old American Coco Gauff became the winner of the US Open in women’s singles in New York. Having lost the first set in the decisive match to the Belarusian Arina Sabolenko, who on Monday will lead the ranking of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) for the first time on Monday, she managed to turn the tide of the struggle and win her first Grand Slam title.

The participants in this final, no matter how you look at it, represented represent fundamentally different types of female tennis stars. They were not similar to each other either in their playing style, since in terms of aggression and athleticism, only Elena Rybakina, representing Kazakhstan last year’s Wimbledon champion, is comparable to Arina Sabalenka in the current world elite, nor in psychology. Still, Coco Gauff is not a fan of gushing out emotions as loudly and expressively as the Belarusian. And these rivals also had fairly standard, but at the same time very different sports biographies.

If the young and early Gauff as a potential Grand Slam champion was already talked about at the age of 15, then Sobolenko in her youth was only an exemplary tennis player with excellent physical data and powerful blows.

Even when the Belarusian, shortly before her 21st birthday, made her way into the top ten, it was believed that with such a straightforward game and unbalanced character, it would not be easy for her to conquer the main tennis peaks. But first, the Russian Dmitry Tursunov successfully took up the taming of this frenzied temperament, and then the current coach Sobolenko, her compatriot Anton Dubrov, continued his work. As a result, women’s tennis received a very worthy, 29th in a row first racket of the world, which, no matter how anyone treats the power style, is very interesting to watch. And the New York final confirmed this.

To say that Sabalenka herself gave up the victory would probably still not be entirely fair, since Gauff showed remarkable patience and perseverance. And yet this was a classic case where the fate of the match depended to a much greater extent on the accuracy of the actions of the more physically gifted tennis player. After the end of the first game, few doubted Sabalenka’s success, but the Minsk resident was unable to maintain that comfortable internal state that allows her to hit the corners of the other half of the court with magnificent cannon shots. Or maybe she just didn’t have the tennis IQ. In this sense, the draw with the score 40:30 in the fourth game on her serve, which may have become a turning point, was indicative. Sabalenka had a 100% advantage and was supposed to hit the ball through the ball into an empty part of the court, but for some reason she first attacked where the American was standing, and then, having played almost perfectly at the net, failed to cope with her impeccable dribble. After two more plays, Gauff led – 3:1. This added to her confidence that the stoic destructive tactics chosen for the match turned out to be correct, and meanwhile the Belarusian was rapidly losing control of her emotions. As a result – 2:6, 6:3, 6:2 in just 2 hours 6 minutes. And Sabalenka, who made 46 unforced errors with 25 hits, could not hold back tears of disappointment after the end of the match.

Gauff also cried, only from joy. Her well-deserved triumph was the intermediate result of a very long professional career, which began in 2019 with a sensational exit to the fourth round of Wimbledon and a title in Linz, Austria.

For the next two seasons, Gauff was in the public eye, but it took time for her talent to fully mature, and she achieved her next great success only at last year’s Roland Garros, where she did not give up a single game in six matches, and only in the final she lost to Poland’s Iga Szwiatek with a clear advantage , at that time – the undisputed first racket of the world. This year, Gauff took the title at a small January competition in Auckland, New Zealand, then went into the shadows again for several months, after which she had a great American series, winning in Washington, Cincinnati, and now the US Open.

It is significant that her opponents at this tournament were completely different. Having given the first set to the German doubles specialist Laura Siegemund in the opening match, the future champion then easily dealt with the 16-year-old Russian Mirra Andreeva, who also started very early and, quite possibly, is following in her footsteps, the strong middle Belgian Elise Mertens and the return to tennis after the birth of two children by former world number one Dane Caroline Wozniacki. In the quarterfinals, Gauff beat the best Latvian tennis player Jelena Ostapenko, who with her power, instability and temperament resembles Sabalenko, and in the semifinals she beat the balanced Czech hard worker Karolina Muchova. Finally, the new first racket of the world could not resist her.

Gauff herself, having hit a record jackpot for the US Open of $3 million in prize money, will rise to third place in the WTA rankings for the first time in her career.

And although she is very far from Sobolenko – more than three thousand points, it cannot be ruled out that in the remaining two months of the season the American will be able to slightly reduce this gap.

Evgeniy Fedyakov