Gauff Wins Six Straight Games From 5-1 Down, Then Waits on Pegula to Stay Alive

Coco Gauff won the match and lost control of her own fate in the same afternoon. She beat Marta Kostyuk 6-4, 7-5 at the WTA Finals on Thursday, coming back from 5-1 down in the second set after calling the trainer for her back, and winning six straight games to close it out. The win leaves her 2-1 in round-robin play, and whether she reaches Saturday’s semi-finals now depends on her friend and frequent doubles partner Jessica Pegula losing to Linda Noskova later on Thursday.

What happened in the second set?

Gauff was losing it, and then she was not. She won the first set 6-4, sealing it with a stab volley that sent fans leaping to their feet under the California desert sun, Reuters reports. In the second, she started to feel back discomfort and called a trainer to come and take a look at it, the Palm Springs Desert Sun reports. After some stretching and wincing she went back out, fell behind 5-1, and a television announcer suggested she should consider dropping one more game and get ready for a third set. That is not how Gauff plays. She fought through the injury, started playing lights-out tennis, and won six straight games for an improbable 6-4, 7-5 win. “I was fully prepared to play a third set there,” she said afterwards, which is the giveaway: at 5-1 down, she had already accepted the decider, and then refused to play it.

Why does she still need help to advance?

Because the tiebreakers were decided before she walked on court. Both Gauff and Pegula are 1-1 through two matches, with Gauff having beaten Pegula in three sets in their head-to-head, and Noskova already through at 2-0. If Pegula beats Noskova, all three finish 2-1, and the first tiebreaker is the percentage of sets won. Gauff would have the lowest set percentage of the three, the Desert Sun reports, because of the set Pegula took off her in their opening match. If Pegula loses, Gauff goes through. If both lose, Pegula still has the edge. The maths is the story of her week: she beat the player she needs to lose, lost to the player who is already through, and now watches the match that decides her season. It is the same group-stage cruelty that Mirra Andreeva turned into a rout against Aryna Sabalenka on Wednesday, winning the last 11 games after trailing 4-1, and the same tournament where Gauff’s opening win over Pegula lasted 2 hours and 39 minutes and still left her short on sets.

What did the trainer visit actually change?

Nothing about her back, and everything about the match. The Desert Sun’s account is that the discomfort arrived mid-set, the trainer came on, and Gauff went back out still struggling to find her form. The six games that followed were not a player getting healthy; they were a player deciding the injury did not get a vote. Reuters notes she needed treatment during the second set, and Tennis Majors records the medical timeout for her back, so the visit is confirmed by three outlets even as the exact wording differs between them. What matters is the sequence: trainer, 5-1 down, six straight games. The back will be the first question if she reaches Saturday, and the semi-final is the only place it will be answered, because a player who wins six straight games on a bad back does not get to rest it until the tournament lets her.

Who is Marta Kostyuk in this story?

The alternate who ran out of matches. Kostyuk joined the eight-player field after world No. 1 Elena Rybakina withdrew with illness, and she failed to win a set in her three matches, Reuters reports. She had already been eliminated before Thursday, having lost to Noskova and Pegula, and she won the Madrid title this year and reached the French Open semi-finals, so the winless week is not a verdict on her season. Her role on Thursday was to be the opponent Gauff had to beat to stay alive, and she nearly was the opponent who ended it, taking a 5-1 lead in the second set before Gauff’s run. The WTA Finals have produced stranger final days than this one, and Jessica Pegula’s own week has already run through a hot-mic row, an apology and a must-win match, so the group has been short on quiet afternoons.

What happens next?

Thursday evening, and then Saturday. Pegula plays Noskova in the second match of the day, and Gauff’s semi-final place is decided by the result. If Noskova wins, Gauff is through and her back gets two days before the semi-finals. If Pegula wins, Gauff is out, and the six-game comeback becomes the last thing she did at this year’s Finals instead of the thing that saved her. Noskova, the Wimbledon champion on her debut, is already through after beating Gauff 6-3, 6-3 on Tuesday, and Aryna Sabalenka’s own path runs through Friday’s eliminator against Elina Svitolina, so the weekend’s semi-final line-up will not be settled until both groups have played out. Gauff has done her part. The rest of it is out of her hands, and she knows it.