Serena Williams' former coach, Rennae Stubbs, strongly disputed claims that Coco Gauff deliberately lost her final WTA Finals round-robin match to eliminate Iga Swiatek.
Gauff won the second-biggest title of her career at the WTA Finals. She overcame Qinwen Zheng 3-6, 6-4, 7-6 after a thrilling and grueling battle that lasted over three hours in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
The 20-year-old won three other matches at the WTA Finals. Victories in her opening round-robin contests against Jessica Pegula and Iga Swiatek sealed Gauff's place in the semifinals with a match to spare.
Aryna Sabalenka, who received a trophy for finishing as the year-end No. 1 this week, was the pre-tournament favorite, but Gauff produced an excellent performance to beat the Belarusian in the semifinal.
The only match Gauff lost at the WTA Finals was against Barbora Krejcikova in her final round-robin contest. That meant this year's Wimbledon champion qualified for the semifinal as the group winner, with Gauff in second.
Gauff's defeat to Krejcikova also eliminated Swiatek. The Pole became just the fourth player in the last 20 years to not reach the semifinal despite winning two matches in the round-robin stage.
Some enraged Swiatek fans claimed Gauff deliberately lost to Krejcikova to prevent the world No. 2 from qualifying because she either does not like her or did not want to play Swiatek again because the round-robin triumph was Gauff's second win in 13 meetings against the Pole.
Speaking on the Rennae Stubbs podcast, Williams' former coach rubbished those conspiracies since Gauff had beaten Swiatek at the tournament and could have earned more prize money by beating Krejcikova.
"Somebody wrote about, 'Coco tanked the match against Krejcikova so Iga couldn’t get through to the semifinals.' No, that’s not how it works. First of all, Coco says, 'I’m going to lose to Krejcikova and then have the possibility of playing Krejcikova again or I’ve already beaten Iga and now if I lose to Krejcikova then I get to play Sabalenka in the semis. Yeah!'"
"No way, that’s not what she’s thinking. She’s thinking, 'I want to win again, I want to get more money into my pocket.' Because if she’d gone undefeated, she’d have made even more money. If you go undefeated, you get an extra bonus."
Another reason Stubbs gave to refute the conspiracy is losing to Krejcikova meant Gauff had to play Sabalenka in the semifinal instead of Zheng. Although Zheng played superbly in the final, Sabalenka was the harder match on paper.
"Arguably, you would say playing against Qinwen at the time was easier than playing against Sabalenka. Why would you want to play Sabalenka?"
"For anyone to suggest that Coco went in there with the dubious sense of, 'I’m going to kick out Iga Swiatek,' is nonsense. There’s no way you want to lose a match going into the semifinals, arguably playing against the best player on hard courts all year in Sabalenka."
"So, stop with the nonsense. That is not what happened. She got beat and she was pissed about losing."