What a way to start the Quarter-Finals with the three hour, three set thriller between Ukrainian Marta Kostyuk & Coco Gauff from the USA where both players fought so hard with back-to-back tiebreaks as Gauff led the first set while Kostyuk activated the 3rd set tiebreaker at 1-1 apiece. But at the end of the day, the match belongs to Gauff who was too good to pull it off towards the finish line for both the win & the semi-final spot, despite 1-2 late consolation games from her opponent. The final score was 6-7 with 6-8 tie, 7-6 with 7-3 tie & 2-6 as Gauff will be tuning into tonight’s 2nd women’s singles quarter-finals match where Barbora Krejcikova (Czech Republic) or reigning AO champ Aryna Sabalanka (Belarus) will meet her next on Thursday.
It’s been a great journey from the show courts to playing at the main event stage but her time has now came to an end where Kostyuk showed lots of fight to give Gauff a hard time along the way. She narrowly lost the first set and narrowly won back in the hope of continuing her fairlytale run into Thursday’s semi-finals night. But unfortunately, she was outrun so fast before being eliminated from this tournament despite picking it up some games towards the end there. She did Ukraine proud as Kostyuk has age by her side at 21 with lots of potential to hopefully fulfill throughout this year’s tennis season. And Gauff is not done yet following a long afternoon out with the win on her first AO knockout finals campaign. She had some tough challenges here & there where Kostyuk does not give her a free run despite picking up some good points. But her fightback and patience has paid off where she finally found a way out to steer away & into the homestretch from her opponent after sharing the lead with Kostyuk at 1-1. Looks like she’s ready for more where winning another grand slam away from home would be great. She has defeated Sabalenka before en route towards her first grand slam title on home soil (US Open) back in September 2023 & Gauff is ready to do it again in order for this to happen if Krejcikova is out tonight.
