{"id":436952,"date":"2026-02-20T23:53:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T23:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/436952\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T23:53:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T23:53:07","slug":"coco-gauff-american-beaten-in-epic-as-elina-svitolina-reaches-dubai-final-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/436952\/","title":{"rendered":"Coco Gauff: American beaten in epic as Elina Svitolina reaches Dubai final"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ukraine&#8217;s Elina Svitolina upset world number four Coco Gauff to set up a final against Jessica Pegula at the Dubai Tennis Championships.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">American Pegula was the first to win her semi-final, fighting back from a disastrous opening set and early break of serve in the second set to defeat compatriot Amanda Anisimova 1-6 6-4 6-3.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Gauff, 21, had a chance to make it an all-American final on Saturday, but Svitolina recorded a 6-4 6-7 (13-15) 6-4 in an epic encounter that lasted three hours and three minutes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 31-year-old Svitolina had four match points in the second-set tie-break and could not take them, but still managed to win the decider.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It means she is back in the final of the event for the first time since claiming back-to-back Dubai titles in 2017 and 2018.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I was playing like there is no tomorrow, just trying to put all the effort in,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In the men&#8217;s Qatar Open, world number one Carlos Alcaraz maintained his perfect start to 2026 with a 7-6 (7-3) 6-4 victory over Russia&#8217;s Andrey Rublev to move into the final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ukraine&#8217;s Elina Svitolina upset world number four Coco Gauff to set up a final against Jessica Pegula at&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-436952","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\/436952","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=436952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}