FIRED-UP GAUFF POWERS PAST PAOLINI TO MAINTAIN HOPES OF BACK-TO-BACK TITLES<\/p>\n
Coco Gauff bounced back from a chastening opening defeat at the WTA Finals in Riyadh to keep her title defence alive courtesy of a straight sets win over Jasmine Paolini.<\/p>\n
The 2024 champion was far more solid throughout as she ousted the Italian eighth seed by a 6-3 6-2 scoreline in one hour and 16 minutes.<\/p>\n
Speaking on court following her win, Gauff said: “I\u2019m really happy with how I played today. <\/p>\n
“It\u2019s definitely a turnaround from my first match, but the beauty of the tournament is that you have another chance to prove yourself. <\/p>\n
“Hopefully I can do well in my next one to give myself a chance to stay in the tournament.”<\/p>\n
The third seed took charge early and surged into a 4-1 lead before a pair of double faults helped Paolini to break back.<\/p>\n
However, Gauff immediately broke again with the help of a trademark cross-court backhand and confidently served out a 40-minute opener to love.<\/p>\n
The Italian was more consistent early in the second but was undone by some supreme Gauff defence in the fifth game and the American calmly consolidated to lead 4-2.<\/p>\n
Paolini had been suffering with illness on arriving at the tournament and she looked resigned to her fate as Gauff broke again, before sealing victory with a much more assured display in terms of her serve and forehand.<\/p>\n
Paolini\u2019s hopes now hang by a thread and she will be eliminated if Jessica Pegula upsets world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka later this afternoon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FIRED-UP GAUFF POWERS PAST PAOLINI TO MAINTAIN HOPES OF BACK-TO-BACK TITLES Coco Gauff bounced back from a chastening…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":244602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-244601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244601","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=244601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}