Coco Gauff won her most significant title of 2024 at the China Open, breaking a record in the process.
The 20-year-old's only title heading into the event in Beijing last week was at the ASB Classic, a WTA 250-level tournament held in the season's opening week in Auckland, New Zealand. She defeated Elina Svitolina to retain her title.
Gauff has still had other solid results this year, including semifinals at the Australian Open, French Open, Indian Wells Open, and the Italian Open. She performed well for long periods of the season without taking the final step.
However, Gauff's form dropped more significantly from the grass-court season until the end of the North American hardcourt swing. Her ranking fell from No. 2 to No. 6 after she lost most of her points from winning the Cincinnati Open and the US Open last year.
That spell of results led to Gauff parting ways with her coach, Brad Gilbert. It seemed sensible at the time, as the experienced coach looked unsure how to help her during matches.
The China Open was Gauff's first tournament since making that decision, and the move proved wise. She won her second WTA 1000 event in Beijing after an outstanding performance against Karolina Muchova.
Gauff also took the opportunity to poke fun at her critics, who said she could only win WTA 250 tournaments in a social media post before hitting back at a troll who replied to the post.
Last year's US Open champion does not need to prove herself to anyone after achieving so much at a young age, but her excellence was further proven by setting a new open-era record.
Gauff has won eight of her nine WTA Tour finals. Her only loss was to Iga Swiatek in the 2022 French Open final, and losing to the best clay-court player in the world in the final at Roland-Garros is nothing to be ashamed of.
Seven of the American's eight titles she won were on hard courts. Gauff's triumph in Bejing made her the first player in the Open Era to triumph in her first seven hard-court finals.
She was asked about that statistic in her press conference after the China Open final and expressed pride, also saying she looks forward to the day when future players become the first to achieve records since her.
"Yeah, that's pretty cool, considering there's been so many great players before me in the open era. Honestly, with the stat things, I feel like every tournament, it's a new stat or new record."
"I'm very thankful. I would be excited to see when the next stat is, the next girl, I don't who, will be the first person to do this since Coco Gauff."
"I don't know if it would have affected my mentality today. That's pretty cool. I hope somebody else breaks it, I think records are meant to be broken, honestly."
Achieving that record at 20 years old is an incredible achievement. It can sometimes be easy for fans to forget how young Gauff still is and that she is in the developmental stage of her career.