Coco Gauff, ranked sixth in the world, ended Danish comeback player Caroline Wozniacki’s streak with a 6-3, 3-6, 6-1 win in the US Open round of 16 on Sunday.
This means she qualified for the quarter-finals, where she will meet the defending champion and world number one, the Pole Iga Swiatek, or the Latvian Jelena Ostapenko (21st) in the evening.
Gauff (19 years old), eliminated last year in the quarter-finals at Flushing Meadows against Frenchwoman Caroline Garcia, has already played the quarter-finals at Roland-Garros this year, where she was a finalist in 2022. Both times in Paris she was beaten by Swiatek.
On Sunday, after a slight starting delay that led to him losing his first service game, Gauff found his pace again and gave Wozniacki little chance in the first set.
In the second game, the 33-year-old Dane again had two break points on her opponent’s first serve game, but this time the American saved them. It was just a shift as Wozniacki, aided by Gauff’s numerous unforced errors (22 in the second set alone and 44 in the entire match), broke, taking the lead 5-3 and throughout his serve in one set the equalized.
The third set was this time dominated by the youngest: the American took advantage by winning the break, taking a 3-1 lead, then again 5-1 and serving for the game.
Former world No. 1 Wozniacki retired after her third-round exit from the 2020 Australian Open. After three and a half years during which she married and gave birth to two children, she announced his return to the circuit last June.
After falling to 623rd in the WTA, she benefited from an invitation to play at Flushing Meadows, where she survived three rounds of victories, notably against Petra Kvitova (11th) and Jennifer Brady, semi-finalist in New York in the year 2020, but fell to 433rd place in the world at the end of August.
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