suffered a first-round exit last year.<\/a><\/p>\nHowever, she recovered from an error-strewn start against world number four Pegula, who was the highest-ranked player left in the singles draw, to win 4-6 6-3 6-3.<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old is the youngest player to reach the semi-finals at all four Grand Slams since Maria Sharapova, who achieved that feat at the 2007 French Open.<\/p>\n
The seventh seed was hindered by four double faults and 17 unforced errors in the opening set.<\/p>\n
But as she has done all tournament, Gauff showed excellent fighting spirit to become the first woman to reach the singles semi-finals with four three-set wins for 30 years.<\/p>\n
“I think a lot of people had me going out in the first or second round this tournament,” Gauff joked afterwards.<\/p>\n
“After seven years playing in this tournament, it is the first time I’ve walked onto Centre Court and not felt nervous. <\/p>\n
“So I don’t know – am I becoming a veteran already?”<\/p>\n
Gauff will face either Naomi Osaka or Karolina Muchova, who meet later on Tuesday, for a place in Saturday’s final.<\/p>\n
After an excellent opening set, Pegula was ultimately punished for failing to take her opportunities early in the second, having forced three break points in her opponent’s first two games.<\/p>\n
The momentum flipped when Gauff capitalised on a poor game from Pegula, breaking to love and maintaining her composure to battle back from 0-30 down as she served out the set to level the match.<\/p>\n
The topsy-turvy nature of the contest continued in the final set, but it was Gauff who was able to raise her level when it mattered.<\/p>\n
The 2023 US Open and 2025 French Open champion offered an immediate response to take a 4-3 lead after Pegula had broken back, and celebrated victory on Pegula’s serve with a first match point.<\/p>\n
The loss means Pegula’s wait for a first Grand Slam singles title goes on – and she may be left to rue a missed opportunity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coco Gauff is through to her first Wimbledon semi-final after battling to a comeback victory over Jessica Pegula.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":748811,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-748810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748810","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=748810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/748811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}