Coco Gauff earned the biggest pay cheque in the history of women’s tennis, pocketing £3.7m when she defeated Qinwen Zheng to claim the first WTA Finals event to be staged in Riyadh.
The moral quandaries of this tournament have been debated at length, and few but the WTA leadership themselves would deny that this tournament is a textbook example of sportswashing.
But we have already covered the political issues at some length. Today is the moment to commend Gauff and Zheng for what was a magnificent final, bringing this WTA season to a resounding end.
Zheng saved two match points in her final service game to send the contest into a deciding-set tie-break. But Gauff responded with a ripping forehand winner to set herself on the right path in the tie-break, then kept forging on eventually to a 6-0 lead.
“No reaction at all to losing those match points,” said Laura Robson, the former British No1 who was commentating for Sky Sports. “She just gets on with it.”
With six match points in her pocket, Gauff missed a couple of chances before wrapping up her 3-6, 6-4, 7-6 victory with a clever little forehand dink into the open court. She fell on her back in the manner familiar to all tennis finals, before going up for a somewhat chilly handshake with Zheng, who barely even looked at her.
The Chinese world No 7 has made a habit of winning deciders this season, coming in on a sequence of 11 victories from her last 12 three-setters, so she was probably surprised to have come unstuck. When she led by a set and a break, at 3-1 up in the second, it seemed that the WTA Finals were about to crown their first Chinese champion. (Li Na was the only previous Chinese woman to qualify.) But Gauff struck a vein of inspiration, reeling off four straight games to change the momentum of the match. “I just tried to hang in there and never give up,” she told Sky Sports afterwards.
Gauff thus walks away with a total prize fund that eclipses the £3.4m that Ashley Barty claimed at the 2019 edition of this event. The youngest finalist at this event since Caroline Wozniacki in 2010, 20-year-old Gauff did not quite go unbeaten, dropping her last group match to Barbora Krejcikova. But she had already qualified for the knock-outs by that stage, and she cashed in on Saturday after first eliminating world No1 Aryna Sabalenka in the semi-finals.
Gauff’s season seemed to be stalling when she went on a run of four losses from seven matches in July and August. But she responded by dispensing with her high-profile coach Brad Gilbert and hiring Matt Daly, a less renowned figure who has nevertheless overseen a brilliant reboot of her technique. Having previously struggled with both her forehand and her serve, Gauff has looked in control of her game throughout the WTA Finals, even on a fast court which exposed some of her peers.
Earlier, British No 2 Cameron Norrie suffered disappointment in the final of Metz, where he suffered an unexpected defeat to world No 124 Benjamin Bonzi. “It was a really high-level match,” said Norrie after his 7-6, 6-4 loss. “I’m not so worried about the result. Finding my level and competitive spirit on the court was a big positive for me.”
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