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
United Cup: Scores<\/a> | Standings<\/a><\/p>\n So, it came as no surprise that in a moment as big as Wednesday\u2019s United Cup quarterfinal tie pitting the United States against Greece, Gauff delivered. The World No. 4 defeated Maria Sakkari 6-3, 6-2 in 1 hour and 26 minutes at RAC Arena, giving the United States a pivotal 1-0 lead ahead of a men\u2019s singles blockbuster between Taylor Fritz and Stefanos Tsitsipas.<\/p>\n What made the performance even more impressive was that Gauff was coming off one of her rougher outings in recent memory, particularly on serve.<\/p>\n Those issues were nowhere to be found under the sunny Perth skies, as the 21-year-old led wire-to-wire.<\/p>\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 Gauff posted much-improved numbers from the service line, landing 68% of her first serves while winning 76% of those points. After hitting 14 double faults just two days earlier, she cut that total to six against Sakkari en route to her 245th career WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz victory.<\/p>\n For 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, Sakkari enters the year at No. 52 in the PIF WTA Rankings.<\/p>\n The win marks Gauff\u2019s third straight over Sakkari and gives her a 6-5 edge in their head-to-head.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Coco Gauff is at her best, it\u2019s not far-fetched to say the American puts the star in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,1959,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-392465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-text","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}