Coco Gauff and Christian Harrison continued their United Cup mixed doubles heroics in Perth Wednesday to lead the United States into the semi-finals of the mixed teams\u2019 tennis tournament.<\/p>\n
Rallying from a set down against an inspired Stefanos Tsitsipas and Maria Sakkari, Gauff and Harrison won their third consecutive live mixed rubber 4-6, 6-4 10-8 on their third match point to keep alive the country\u2019s hopes of claiming a third United Cup title in the past four years. <\/p>\n
The United States will now travel to Sydney to play the winner of the Poland-Australia quarter-final. Today\u2019s other quarter-final in Perth sees Switzerland play Argentina. <\/p>\n
In a rollercoaster quarter-final, Gauff gave the Americans an early lead with a 6-3, 6-2 win over Sakkari. But Tsitsipas responded with a 6-4, 7-5 triumph over World No. 9 Taylor Fritz \u2013 his first Top 10 victory in more than 18 months. <\/p>\n
Claiming his first Top 10 win in more than 18 months, the 27-year-old former World No. 3 rode a serving masterclass to a 6-4, 7-5 win, levelling the tie after Coco Gauff’s earlier win over Maria Sakkari. <\/p>\n
“I was fighting for the team and it was such a great match from my end,” a delighted Tsitsipas said. “It’s pretty straight forward when you are 0-1 down; I was aware of the level I needed to bring onto the court today. I felt I owed it to my team. <\/p>\n
“Before I went to bed last night I was already visualising how the match was going to go. I was already playing it in my mind and I’m so happy to win exactly the way I planned. I was especially pleased with my serve and how I dealt with the pressure moments with a clear head.” <\/p>\n
Putting 84 per cent of first serves into play in the first set put the Greek in an aggressive mindset. He fired an ace to fight off a set point at 4-5 in the second set and broke Fritz in the following game to set up the win. He won 80 per cent of first serves in the match. <\/p>\n
Tsitsipas improved to 9-2 at United Cup in singles. It was his first Top 10 win since defeating No. 5 Alexander Zverev, No. 2 Jannik Sinner and No. 10 Casper Ruud to win the 2024 Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters.<\/p>\n
Tsitsipas will partner Sakkari in the deciding mixed doubles against Christian Harrison and Coco Gauff.<\/p>\n
When Coco Gauff is at her best, it\u2019s not far-fetched to say the American puts the star in \u201cstars and stripes\u201d.<\/p>\n
\nSo it came as no surprise that Gauff delivered in a big moment on Wednesday in the United States\u2019 quarter-final tie against Greece. The World No. 4 defeated Maria Sakkari 6-3, 6-2 in one hour and 26 minutes at RAC Arena to give the Americans an early lead in the tie.
\nWhat made Gauff\u2019s performance even more impressive was that she was coming off one of her rougher outings in recent memory, particularly on serve. Those issues were nowhere to be found under the sunny Perth skies, as the 21-year-old led wire-to-wire.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cDefinitely a much better match today,\u201d Gauff said in her on-court interview. \u201cLast match, I just tried to erase it. That\u2019s the beauty of this tournament, and having a team like Taylor [Fritz] and Christian [Harrison] that gave me the chance to stay in the tournament and be able to prove myself better today. So definitely happy to give my team the lead today.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nGauff posted much-improved numbers from the service line, landing 68 per cent of her first serves while winning 76 per cent of those points. After hitting 14 double faults just two days earlier, she cut that total to just six against Sakkari en route to victory.<\/p>\n
\nFor Sakkari, the match was a step back in what has otherwise been a promising week, highlighted by wins over Naomi Osaka and Emma Raducanu. While the season is only just beginning, 2026 looms large for the 30-year-old. A former Top 5 player on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz, Sakkari enters the year at No. 52 in the PIF WTA Rankings.<\/p>\n
\nGauff\u2019s win marks her third straight over Sakkari, giving the American a 6-5 edge in their head-to-head.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coco Gauff and Christian Harrison continued their United Cup mixed doubles heroics in Perth Wednesday to lead the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397141,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-397140","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397140","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=397140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}