Coco Gauff played one of the more confusing matches in recent memory at the 2024 Qatar Open and was stunned by Katerina Siniakova.
This match was odd, very odd. Not only was the result odd, considering how dominant Gauff was in the past against Siniakova, but the way the match unfolded was even odd.
The Czech player is a solid player who is capable of hitting extremely well from the baseline, even though it rarely happens. It happened in this match, but even that wasn't really enough most of the time.
Gauff was the better player for a good part of the match. The eye test easily confirmed this, but she made some very unreasonable choices. Her play on crucial points was, for the most part, pretty bad, and it was mostly due to shot selection.
Siniakova outplayed her completely in most of those points, especially when the match was being decided in the second set. The first set saw Gauff mostly struggling to counter Siniakova's exceptional hitting so it was the American, who was quite stunned by what was happening.
She would bounce back in the second set, jumping out to an early 3-0 lead, and seemingly everything would be fine. She then added another break for good measure, and it was 4-0 for the 19-year-old.
Surprisingly, however, the 2023 US Open champion broke in the very next game. The same thing would happen at 4-2, and rather quickly, Siniakova found herself at 4-4 from 0-4 down.
Not only that, but she would break once more for the 5-4 lead and actually close it out to win the second set 6-4. The Czech player went from 0-4 to 6-4 against Gauff, who was stunned by what was happening on the court.
The final score was 6-2, 6-4 for Siniakova, who will be looking to the next round, while Gauff will need to take some time to assess what really happened.
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