Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula are not going to play a lot of tennis together, and what is likely their last year together is not going really well.
The younger of the successful doubles duo wants to focus more on her singles career, and that's why it's likely that Gauff and Pegula will stop playing together after the 2024 season.
This year, they still have motivation to continue, as they want to challenge for Olympic medals later this year. For that, they need some chemistry on the court as well as match practice, so after skipping everything until the Sunshine Double, they appeared on the court again together.
First, they entered the Indian Wells Open, making the quarter-finals of the tournament, and they also signed up for the WTA 1000 tournament in Miami, but their Miami Open campaign didn't go that well.
The fifth-seeded team took on fellow Americans in the first round, Ashlyn Krueger and Sloane Stephens, who received a doubles card into the doubles tournament in Miami.
The wild card duo literally flew into the match, breaking Gauff's and also Pegula's serve and establishing a massive 5-0 lead early in the first set of this first-round match.
They then lost one break, but Krueger and Stephens were still able to easily win the first set 6-3, setting up the stage for an upset in the women's doubles competition.
But in the second set, the seeded American duo managed to also establish a two-break lead, and despite also losing one of the breaks, they broke again and won the second set 6-1, forcing the third-set match tie-break to decide the winner.
In the match tie-break, Gauff and Pegula were on the back foot since the start, but they managed to erase a 3-6 deficit and make it 6-6 and later 8-8.
Still, they never led in the match tie-break, and ultimately, they lost it 8-10. Both will now want to focus on their singles campaigns at the event and likely shift their focus in doubles to the clay, the surface on which the Olympic Games will be played as well.
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