Coco Gauff surprised many by taking a wild card entry into the Zhengzhou Open, a WTA 500 event, after the China Open this week.
It's been an interesting return to tennis for Gauff, who breezed through in her first match only to barely escape in the second match. She lost the doubles match with Jessica Pegula as well, which isn't that ideal, but more importantly, she's just glad to be back and playing tennis again.
Taking some time off following the US Open triumph did her good, but she's a competitor, and playing tennis is what she likes doing the most. This week's China Open won't be her only event in Asia, as she'll play in Zhengzhou the following week.
It's a WTA 500 event so a rather big one and the decision was mostly to get a bit more match time ahead of a two-week break leading up to the WTA Finals. She simply wanted to have two events before the WTA Finals in the final week of October.
Yeah, I mean, after that tournament, assuming if I do well, I would have two weeks before the Finals. Really I wanted to have a second tournament in case this one doesn't go as well. I wanted matches before the WTA Finals because from the US Open to the Finals is a long stint. If you lose early here, the Finals is a long stint. I wanted to play at least two tournaments down here.
The decision to make it consecutive weeks came naturally to Gauff because she didn't know what would happen in Beijing. She might have lost to Petra Martic, which would shine a totally different light onto her taking a wildcard entry.
She certainly didn't want to play the week before the WTA Finals so this way it makes more sense.
Playing the last week would have been tough, too quick of a turnaround before WTA Finals, so we decided to play that tournament. Yeah, I mean, assuming all goes well, I could do well there, then be in good form for the Finals.
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