{"id":206552,"date":"2025-10-12T03:09:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T03:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/206552\/"},"modified":"2025-10-12T03:09:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T03:09:12","slug":"coco-gauff-to-face-compatriot-jessica-pegula-in-blockbuster-all-american-wuhan-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/206552\/","title":{"rendered":"Coco Gauff to face compatriot Jessica Pegula in blockbuster all-American Wuhan final"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jessica Pegula fought back to end Aryna Sabalenka’s perfect record in Wuhan with a dramatic 2-6, 6-4, 7-6(2) victory in the semi-finals on Saturday and will face Coco Gauff for the title.<\/p>\n

Contesting an eighth consecutive three-setter, Pegula<\/a> clawed her way back from 2-5 down in the decider to shock the world number one<\/a> and set up a final against fellow American Gauff<\/a>, who squeezed past Jasmine Paolini<\/a> 6-4, 6-3<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“That was crazy, I can’t believe I came back and won that,” said Pegula, who has won seven of the eight consecutive three-set matches she played in the last 17 days.<\/p>\n

“I\u2019m just really proud of myself. I\u2019ve played so much tennis the last few weeks, so many three-set matches but I feel like I\u2019m very tough right now and I\u2019m just using that as best I can.”<\/p>\n

The sixth-seeded Pegula is through to her sixth final of the season, having dethroned the reigning Wuhan champion Sabalenka<\/a>, who came into the match with a perfect 20-0 record at the tournament.<\/p>\n

Played in significantly cooler temperatures compared to the rest of the week, both semi-finals of the day featured a whopping number of service breaks due to the slower conditions.<\/p>\n

There were five breaks of serve in the first six games of the contest before Sabalenka managed to consolidate her advantage and create a 5-2 gap.<\/p>\n

Pegula, 31, threw her racquet in frustration when Sabalenka fired a return winner to get to set point the following game and the Belarusian scooped the opening set as the match clock hit 40 minutes.<\/p>\n

Despite her struggles on serve, Pegula was playing great off the ground, which helped her course-correct in the second set.<\/p>\n

The American squandered a 2-0 lead early on but recovered to wrestle the second set away from Sabalenka\u2019s hands and force a decider.<\/p>\n

The final set was another see-saw affair, but it looked almost over when Sabalenka served for the win at 5-3. Pegula had other ideas and flipped the script to lead 6-5.<\/p>\n

Serving for the victory, Pegula double-faulted four times and let two match points slip away, allowing Sabalenka to force a deciding tiebreak.<\/p>\n

Pegula upped her level when she needed it the most to claim just the third victory from 11 meetings with Sabalenka.<\/p>\n

Gauff ousts Paolini<\/p>\n

Gauff survived a battle of wills and some serving wobbles against Paolini in their semi-final.<\/p>\n

The two-time Grand Slam champion had lost all three meetings she had with Paolini in 2025 but turned things around with a clutch effort on Saturday.<\/p>\n

“It was 3-0 this year but I think our head-to-head is even now,” said Gauff of her record against the Italian.<\/p>\n

“I\u2019m really happy with how I played today, it was tough, especially playing on the serve, but I did what I needed to do to get through.”<\/p>\n

In a semi-final dominated by the return, Gauff edged Paolini by the slimmest of margins.<\/p>\n

A run of 11 consecutive breaks of serve swung the momentum like a pendulum, but it was Gauff who finally held serve in game seven of the second set en route to an 82-minute victory.<\/p>\n

The 21-year-old is through to the fifth WTA 1000 final of her career, and third in 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jessica Pegula fought back to end Aryna Sabalenka’s perfect record in Wuhan with a dramatic 2-6, 6-4, 7-6(2)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206553,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-206552","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}