Jessica Bouzas Maneiro is coming off a breakout 2025 season in which she set a career-high ranking of No. 40, reached the fourth round of a Grand Slam for the first time at Wimbledon and made her first WTA 1000 quarterfinal in Montreal.<\/p>\n
On Monday at the United Cup, the Spaniard carried that momentum into 2026, upsetting World No. 4 Coco Gauff in dominant fashion, 6-1, 6-7 (3), 6-0 at RAC Arena. The loss is Gauff\u2019s first at the United Cup in 10 matches across singles and doubles; she entered the day 6-0 in singles and 9-0 overall. <\/p>\n
The win marks Bouzas Maneiro\u2019s first career Top-5 victory and gives Spain a 1-0 lead over the United States ahead of the men\u2019s singles match between Taylor Fritz and Jaume Munar. <\/p>\n
\u201cI know Coco and she\u2019s a fighter,\u201d Bouzas Maneiro said after the match. \u201cShe\u2019s there all the time in the match, so I knew that I had to be there, and even if I\u2019m 4-1 up, I have to be there. And yeah, she won the second set and I went to the bathroom and I was trying to focus just to take it point by point. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that was my mentality in the third set. To be [there] with power every point because even if you are [up] 3-0 or 4-0, you have to be ready.\u201d <\/p>\n
Bouzas Maneiro set the tone immediately, breaking Gauff in the opening game en route to a 5-0 lead. She went on to break the American in all four of her service games in the first set and nine times overall. <\/p>\n
Her forehand — which produced 11 winners in the match — fueled her early surge, but her return game, paired with Gauff\u2019s serving struggles, defined the rest of the match. It was a stark contrast to Gauff\u2019s dominant performance earlier in the week against Argentina\u2019s Solana Sierra. <\/p>\n
Gauff landed just 60% of her first serves and won just under 60% of those points. She was further undone by 14 double faults and 54 unforced errors. Bouzas Maneiro could only match Gauff\u2019s first-serve numbers but managed her unforced errors more effectively (41) and converted 9 of 12 break points. <\/p>\n
Still, Gauff refused to go quietly despite her struggles. She rallied from 4-1 down to take the second set in a tiebreak and appeared poised for a remarkable comeback. But Bouzas Maneiro broke to open the decider and never looked back, racing to a 4-0 lead after saving two break points in a five-deuce game. <\/p>\n
After 2 hours and 12 minutes, Bouzas Maneiro closed out the match with a third-set bagel, earning a bit of redemption after being blanked in a deciding set by Sierra earlier in the week, and secured the biggest win of her career. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jessica Bouzas Maneiro is coming off a breakout 2025 season in which she set a career-high ranking of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392554,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-392553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}