Road to the WTA Finals: Gauff and Pegula

Editor's note: From Monday to Thursday this week, we will look at the road each of the eight singles players and eight doubles took to qualify for this year's WTA Finals in Fort Worth, Texas. 

Singles

Monday: No.1 Swiatek | No.2 Jabeur

Tuesday: No.3 Pegula | No.4 Gauff

Wednesday: No.5 Sakkari | No.6 Garcia

Thursday: No.7 Sabalenka | No.8 Kasatkina

Doubles

Monday: No.1 Krejcikova and Siniakova | No.2 Dabrowski and Olmos

Tuesday: No.3 Pegula and Gauff | No.4 Mertens and Kudermetova

Wednesday: No.5 Kichenok and Ostapenko | No.6 Yang and Xu

Thursday: No.7 Haddad Maia and Danilina  | No.8 Schuurs and Krawczyk

Season at a glance

Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula did not intend to end up playing doubles together in 2022.

Gauff started the year in Australia alongside Caty McNally, with whom she had won three titles and reached the 2021 US Open final. Meanwhile, Pegula won her first trophy with regular partner Asia Muhammad at Melbourne Summer Set 1.

Gauff and Pegula had played with each other before, but went 0-2.

But the Middle East swing in February threw them together again. Gauff and Pegula were there as Top 20 singles players. McNally and Muhammad, both outside the Top 100, were ranked too low to get in.

In Doha, Gauff and Pegula teamed up to capture their first WTA 1000 title -- a moment that, according to Gauff, "put in perspective that we are a good team."

That perspective crystallized their new regular partnership -- one that also took them to the Roland Garros final and a second WTA 1000 title in Toronto, an event in which Gauff ascended to World No.1 for the first time. At 18 years and 154 days old, the American became the second-youngest No.1 ranked player in doubles, following Martina Hingis.

By the numbers

WTA Finals history

No previous appearances for either.

Notable stats

Pegula and Gauff became the first American players to make their WTA Finals debuts in both singles and doubles in the same year since Lindsay Davenport in 1994. The last overall player to accomplish this was Karolina Pliskova in 2016.