Gauff fights back to knock out Svitolina and return to fourth round of US Open
The defending champion defeated Elina Svitolina 3-6, 6-3, 6-3 on Arthur Ashe Stadium and will either Emma Navarro or Marta Kostyuk in the fourth round
Coco Gauff, US Open, 2024 © Antoine Couvercelle / Panoramic
Coco Gauff‘s US Open title defence remains on track as she battled past Elina Svitolina, overcoming the Ukrainian 3-6, 6-3, 6-3 in front of a delighted Arthur Ashe crowd to return to the last 16 at Flushing Meadows.
Victory brings last year’s champion back to the second week of her home Grand Slam, while Svitolina exits the tournament she was a semi-finalist at five years ago.
Gauff has seemingly recovered from an alarming slump in form suffered in the run-up to the final major of the year, during which she fell early in both Canada and Cincinnati, to find her fighting spirit at a tournament that means more to her than most.
But it wasn’t a straightforward route to victory for the world No 3, who had to recover from a one-set deficit in a tense and attritional contest.
Svitolina started the better of the two, probing the American’s serve for weakness before finding her way through in the eighth game of the opening set, breaking to love for a 5-3 lead before serving out a one-set lead.
But Gauff regrouped impressively, tightening up her own service games while opting to attack Svitolina’s second serve whenever she could. This tweaked approach paid dividends, with Gauff making her breakthrough in the sixth game of the second set en route to a 5-2 lead – a shift in momentum that proved pivotal to the outcome of the match.
Gauff levelled the scores at one set all before striking again in the opening game of the decider as the Ukrainian’s own game began to wilt.
As Svitolina’s struggles mounted, with uncharacteristic errors spraying too frequently from her racquet, Gauff broke again in the fifth game to move into a commanding lead.
As she served for the match at 40-0, 5-2 up, however, the American coughed up two untimely double-faults, as her opponent saved all three match points en route to breaking for 5-3 to extend the contest.
It was a short-lived resistance from Svitolina, though, who threw in another very loose service game of her own to hand Gauff a break to love and, with it, safe passage into the fourth round.
gauff arrests poor run of form right in time for us open title defence
Champion in 2023, Gauff looked every bit back to the player who so sensationally stormed to the New York crown twelve months ago, letting out a roar of delight to match the crowd’s before pointing down to the court of which she is still the rightful queen.
“This win means a lot. I knew today was going to be a tough match. Every time I play Elina, she’s a fighter,” Gauff said in her on-court interview following victory.
“I knew I had to bring my best tennis. I thought I played well. I served much better than last match except the last service game but overall I was proud of what I was able to do.
“I think I tried to be more aggressive, especially on my forehand side and making less errors on the backhand. I was missing a lot of backhands in the net so I was just trying to make less errors.
“She was playing well. She was playing aggressive. She was hitting her spots and I think the difference was just me being more aggressive, especially on serve.”
Svitolina will be left to rue a missed opportunity to press home her advantage over a player whose form has been shaky of late. It is another year without a Grand Slam trophy for the Ukrainian, who many predicted earlier in her career would be a sure bet to win several.
But her progress remains steady, following her return to tour in 2023 after giving birth to daughter Skai, with second-week appearances achieved at all the majors other than here at Flushing Meadows this season.
Next up for Gauff, meanwhile, is a fourth-round encounter with either fellow American Emma Navarro, currently enjoying by far the best season of her career, or another Ukrainian in the perennially dangerous Marta Kostyuk.
The North American hard-court summer began in somewhat ominous fashion for Gauff, but should she come through that one, then she will be back into the quarter-finals of the US Open.
From there, she’d be as strong a favourite as anyone to retain her New York crown.
