Coco Gauff won the Tournament of Champions in dramatic fashion after Qinwen Zheng served for the match!

American player Coco Gauff won the Tournament of Champions in dramatic fashion, coming back after Qinwen Zheng had won the first set and serving for the match.

Gauff claimed her third trophy of the year after defeating China’s Qinwen Zheng 3-6, 6-4, 7-6 (2).

Coco Gauff became the youngest winner of the Tournament of Champions in the last 20 years

The match lasted 3 hours and 4 minutes, being the longest final in the history of the competition. Qinwen, this year’s Olympic champion, won the first set, and served for the match at 5-4 in the decider.

Only Gauff had a sensational comeback, not before missing two match points at 6-5 and two more in the tie-break. For this success, she will receive $4,805,000, the largest amount paid at a WTA tournament.

Gauff, who turned 20 on March 13, is the youngest victorious in the Tournament of Champions from the last two decades. In the year she was born, Sharapova defeated her great American rival Serena Williams in the final at 17 years old.

The doubles event was won by Katerina Siniakova and Taylor Townsend (Czech Republic, United States; cs 8), who beat Nicole Melichar-Martinez and Ellen Perez (USA, Australia; 6) 7-5, 6-3 . The two pairs were also opponents in the Green Group, but on November 4, Siniakova and Townsend prevailed with a doubles 6-2.

Coco Gauff and Qinwen Zheng had also met in the finals of the Orange Bowl tournament in late 2018

In 2023, Gauff won her first Grand Slam, and the only one for now, winning the US Open after beating Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka 2-6, 6-3, 6-2 in the final.

This year, however, she experienced several surprising setbacks. At Wimbledon, she was eliminated in the round of 16 by her compatriot Emma Navaro 5-7, 2-6 (2). At the Olympic Games, she lost 6-7 (7), 2-6, also in the round of 16, to Croatian Donna Vekic.

In Toronto she won only one match, in Cincinnati she was eliminated in the debut round, but at the US Open she left the competition in the round of 16, also being defeated by Navarro.

As a result, he made an important decision. He fired his coach, former American great Brad Gilbert. He hired Jean-Christophe Faurel and Matt Daly with a very specific goal: to improve his serve and forehand.

“I was looking for someone to help me improve in the long term,” explained the player who will end the year ranked 3rd in the WTA rankings for the second time in a row.

Interestingly, Coco Gauff and Qinwen Zheng also faced each other in the final of the Orange Bowl tournament at the end of 2018, a kind of World Championship for athletes who have not reached the age of 18.

She defeated the American, in three sets, becoming the youngest champion in history, at only 15 years and 9 months.