Coco Gauff stepped onto the court Tuesday with more at stake than usual for a fourth-round match.<\/p>\n
A win would send her to the China Open quarterfinals for the third straight year, keep her title defense alive and allow her to officially clinch a spot in the 2025 WTA Finals — her fourth consecutive qualification for the year-end tournament.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And while it wasn\u2019t easy, the two-time Grand Slam champion checked every box, rallying for a gritty 4-6, 7-6 (4), 6-2 victory over Belinda Bencic in 2 hours and 29 minutes.<\/p>\n
Beijing: Scores<\/a> | Draws<\/a> | Order of play<\/a><\/p>\n It marked Gauff\u2019s fourth win in six meetings with Bencic — three of them coming in 2025.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a tough match,\u201d Gauff said afterwards. \u201cI had chances in the first set to close it out, but overall, I\u2019m happy with how I fought. She was being really aggressive, but I tried my best\u2026I\u2019m happy to be back in Riyadh and I\u2019m glad I was able to (qualify) here.\u201d<\/p>\n Gauff came out firing, dominating on serve and racing to a 4-1 lead. She looked poised to cruise through the first set and possibly the match.<\/p>\n Then things got tricky.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bencic stormed back, winning five straight games to steal the opening set and later went up a break in the second set. But as she so often does, Gauff dug in.<\/p>\n The American was 1-for-8 on break points before converting her second of the match to level the second set at 4-all. She then held serve to force a tiebreak, where both players had a reason to feel confident.<\/p>\n Gauff entered the day with a 9-5 record in tiebreaks this year; Bencic was slightly better at 9-4. But it was Gauff who came from a mini break down to win the tiebreak and force a decider.<\/p>\n The third set was all Gauff. She broke twice as she improved to 12-2 in three-set matches this season, once again showing the resilience of a champion when it matters most.<\/p>\n Here are three fun facts from Thursday\u2019s match:<\/p>\n Home away from home: Gauff says she loves playing in Beijing and given the number of gifts she continues to receive from fans, it\u2019s easy to see why.<\/p>\n \u201cI hope so,\u201d Gauff said when asked if more presents might be coming. \u201cI love gifts.\u201d<\/p>\n As to why Chinese fans feel so connected to Gauff, it may have to do with the fact that since 2023, Gauff has earned 16 WTA-level wins on Chinese soil, second only to China\u2019s Zheng Qinwen (17).<\/p>\n Three strikes and you\u2019re out: If you\u2019re Bencic or Leylah Fernandez, please look away.<\/p>\n With Tuesday\u2019s win, Gauff has now beaten Bencic three times in four tries this season. Coincidentally, she\u2019s also defeated Fernandez three times in 2025.<\/p>\n The third win against each sent both players packing in their search for Beijing glory.<\/p>\n Youngest to ever do it: It\u2019s easy to forget that Gauff is still only 21 years old.<\/p>\n Until you realize she\u2019s the youngest player to register nine consecutive wins in women\u2019s singles at the China Open since the tournament began in 2004.<\/p>\n And that she\u2019s also the youngest to play 14 matches, win 13 matches and reach three quarterfinals at the event — all since its inception.<\/p>\n Gauff will face Eva Lys in the quarterfinals in what will be the first meeting between the two. A win would send Gauff to her third consecutive China Open semifinal and third WTA 1000 semifinal of the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coco Gauff stepped onto the court Tuesday with more at stake than usual for a fourth-round match. A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,1602,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-170164","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-text","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}