Coco Gauff recently expressed her thoughts on the tough battle she fought against Elina Svitolina in the semifinal of the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championship, the WTA 1000 tournament, whose final will be between the latter and Jessica Pegula. The world No. 4 reflected that, despite giving it all and losing, she’s content and has learnt from her loss, including winning her longest tiebreaker.
Coco Gauff Remains in High Spirits, Shares Uplifting and Fun Messages on Her Longest Tiebreaker
Gauff has entered the Dubai Tennis Championship as the third seed and surpassed Anna Kalinskaya in the round of 32, Elise Mertens in the round of 16, and overcame 20-year-old Alexandra Eala in the quarterfinal. In the semifinal, she was set to clash against the seventh seed, Svitolina, who secured her first title of the season at the ASB Classic.
Gauff’s clash against the World No. 9 was gritty, as Svitolina won the first set at 6-4, then in the second set, the American played her longest tiebreaker, at 15-13, winning the set, and then lost the third set, with a concluding score of 6-4, 6-7 (13), 6-4 in 3 hours and 3 minutes. The Ukrainian star now leads their head-to-head with 3-2 and last defeated Gauff in the Australian Open’s quarterfinal round.
Through her Instagram post, Gauff highlighted that she tried her best to win and is content with her fight, as she has learned a lot from it. While also appreciating the tournament, she added, “left it all out there yesterday… didn’t get the result I wanted but man that was sm fun. battles like this make it worth it, a lot to learn from. thank you dubai!!”
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Through her Instagram story, Gauff light-heartedly added:
“Longest tiebreaker I have ever played lol. for non tennis people it was supposed to be first to 7 points win. but you have to win by two which took awhile for us to do 😂 definitely lost years off my life during this lol.”
During her post-match on-court interview, Gauff’s opponent expressed her thoughts on their clash, “Speechless after that fight. I was really trying to put myself out there, and I was playing like there is no tomorrow, just trying to put all the effort in. Thank you so much for all your support. It’s really, really special to be in the final again here after a few years and to have another chance to lift that beautiful trophy.”
Svitolina is 3-5 in her head-to-head against Pegula, and their last match, the round of 16 at the 2025 Indian Wells tournament, was clinched by the former.
