Coco Gauff arrived in Riyadh on Monday, October 27, ahead of the 2025 WTA Finals, which will run from November 1 to 8. The American will be defending her year-end title at the elite event after struggling with a rather up-and-down season that fell short of her lofty standards.
While Gauff enjoyed a strong European claycourt season earlier this year, winning her second career Major at the French Open in June, she experienced form issues in the next three months. Having suffered early exits from every subsequent big tournament, including Wimbledon and the US Open, the World No. 3 bounced back in style by picking up her second title of the year at the Wuhan Open earlier this month.
Coco Gauff Looking Forward to Her 2024 WTA Finals Defense in Riyadh
Coco Gauff will be eager to continue her five-match winning streak at the WTA Finals in Riyadh, where she won the 2024 title in hard-fought fashion against Zheng Qinwen in a three-set championship match. On Monday, the 21-year-old posted an Instagram story featuring a photo of her name and her picture from last year’s trophy ceremony on the champions’ wall at the King Saud University Indoor Arena.
In the caption, the two-time Major winner revealed to her followers that she had landed in the Middle Eastern country for her final tournament of 2025.
“Last stop of the year 😌,” Coco Gauff wrote on her Instagram stories on Monday.
If Gauff can go all the way at this week’s WTA Finals, she will be looking down the prospect of winning back-to-back singles titles for the first time since 2023 when she reigned supreme at the Cincinnati Open and the US Open. Following her Paris triumph, the 11-time singles titlist had fallen into a slump as she surrendered five of her next 13 matches.
The American somewhat righted the ship during her China Open title defense in early October, reaching the semifinals before going out 1-6, 2-6 to a red-hot Amanda Anisimova. She then didn’t drop a set en route to her first-ever Wuhan Open triumph, beating Jasmine Paolini and Jessica Pegula in the semifinals and the final, respectively.
Coco Gauff Also Made Amends for Her Middling Form at Last Year’s WTA Finals
Coco Gauff announced herself at the head of the table with her maiden Major triumph at the 2023 US Open. However, the then-teenager struggled for a large part of the 2024 season that also saw her part ways with her coach and tennis veteran, Brad Gilbert. Having failed to make her mark at any big tournament, she enjoyed a complete reversal of fortunes at the inaugural Riyadh-based WTA Finals.
Despite a subpar 2-5 win/loss record before last year, Gauff came into her own at the year-end championships. Although she had a slow start, losing 5-7, 4-6 to Barbora Krejčíková in her opening round-robin match, she beat Jessica Pegula 6-3, 6-2 and Iga Świątek 6-3, 6-4 in her next two matches to qualify for the semifinals.
The World No. 3 then defeated Aryna Sabalenka 7-6(4), 6-3 to reach only her second big title match since 2023. In the final, she broke fellow first-time finalist Zheng Qinwen as the latter served for the 2024 WTA Finals in the third set before eking out a 3-6, 6-4, 7-6(2) victory in three hours and 32 minutes.