Coco Gauff is back to winning matches as the American booked the Cincinnati Masters quarter-finals over fellow teenager Linda Noskova.
This was a super fun match between two young players who will battle on the WTA Tour for the next ten years. Noskova has been in pretty decent form recently, making a deep run in Prague recently. She added a couple of wins here as well, but none of that measured up to facing Gauff on her native soil in Cincinnati.
Gauff put together some impressive runs recently as well. It all started in Washington, where she won the trophy, but she also played well in Montreal. Losing to eventual champion Pegula was disappointing, but she made a winning return here and kept going strong against Noskova.
The match opened with the players trading early breaks, which would be the theme of the opening set and match overall. Neither player served particularly well, and they certainly didn't play well, struggling to win service games. Gauff was broken four times in the opening set, but Noskova was broken five times.
The result was Gauff winning the set 6-4. They were a combined 3/23 on the second serve. The second set opened with Gauff breaking Noskova again as the Czech player struggled greatly on her serve. Gauff stabilized her own play and completely crushed her opponent down the stretch.
The final score was 6-4 6-0 for the American, who was ridiculously dominant on the serve of Noskova, winning the overwhelming majority of those points. She broke Noskova 8 times in this match, allowing her only 13 points on serve in the entire match.
The win sends Gauff to the quarter-finals, where she will face Italy's Jasmine Paolini. That's a very favourable matchup for the American. Paolini advanced to the quarter-final after Elena Rybakina retired from their match with a shoulder injury.
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