Champions Corner: Gauff’s season comes full circle with late-night Riyadh win

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Sometimes you just want to tell Coco Gauff to slow down.

After a three-hour battle to secure the WTA Finals title over Zheng Qinwen, the Riyadh champion is racing through media rounds, hoping to make her 2:45 a.m. flight home.

But that's life in the fast lane for Gauff. Late Saturday night, she joined the WTA Insider Podcast from the backseat of the car on her way to her champion's photo shoot. Five years after making her debut as a 15-year-old on the Hologic WTA Tour, Gauff now owns at least one title at every tour level.

Though the 2023 US Open is still her career highlight, her ability to add a pair of WTA 1000 titles, a WTA 500, three WTA 250s and now a WTA Finals shows she's thriving. She joins Iga Swiatek as the only active players under 30 to complete wins at every level.

To quote Novak Djokovic's famous press conference quip: "Not too bad."

"I remember after my loss in Cincinnati, they have the TV on Tennis Channel in the locker room," Gauff said. "I couldn't hear what what they were saying but the headline was like 'Gauff's Slump Summer' or something like that.

"I looked at that and I was just like, 'Dang, I have to turn it around somehow.' And then I lost a pretty tough match against Emma [Navarro] at US Open. A lot of people were critiquing my season, you know, 'Flop era.' I know all the Twitter terms.

"I think for me it was just motivation. I'm the author of my own story, and I'm not going to let anybody write me off."

Gauff's ability to channel every challenge has propelled her forward. She internalizes it all and then, like the shonen anime characters she loves, redirects that energy toward victory.

She famously thanked her haters after winning the US Open last year. This year, she saw the comments ahead of her match against Swiatek in the group stage predicting a beatdown. She came away with a straight-sets win.

"I don't really talk to my team or anybody," Gauff said, when asked how she processes the negative comments. "Sometimes my boyfriend, but not to a deep extent. I do journal a lot, and I think it's just a lot of self-reflection and self awareness. I do have a therapist. I haven't gone in a while, but I do that. I try to go once every two weeks, schedule permitting.

"I think a combination of her, myself and obviously my parents. My dad is pretty petty like me. I'm pretty sure the first thing he's going to say when I call him is something about what people were saying about me."

Next up for Gauff? She's headed to Los Angeles, where she'll hit up Camp Flog Gnaw, an arts and music festival that has become the cornerstone of her offseason. It's a rare opportunity for one sports' biggest stars to dance and vibe with strangers and feel like a regular 20-year-old music fan.

Of course, Coco Gauff is no regular 20-year-old. She just took home a record-breaking $4.805 million prize money check for her efforts at the WTA Finals Riyadh presented by PIF. She's also likely to hear her name when her favorite rapper, Tyler, the Creator, takes the stage.

"I've tried to memorize the verse," Gauff said. "I'm almost there, so I can just rap along. But it's still crazy to me. When I listen to it, it's like, why is my name in this song? Especially, I've been a fan of Tyler literally since I was 14 years old, and I would have never guessed that would happen."

So how will Coco react when she hears her shout out?

"I don't really know," she said, laughing. "I mean, I think I'll just like kind of be like, yeah, that's me."

Here's a few more notes from the final event of the 2024 Hologic WTA Tour season:

Honor Roll

Zheng Qinwen: Playing in her first WTA Finals, the 22-year-old from China came close to taking the title. In the final, she had break leads in both the second and third sets -- she served for the championship at 5-4 in the third set -- before being outplayed by Gauff in the final-set tiebreak.

Still, Riyadh was a stellar capper for yet another season where Zheng has leveled up. She's 31-6 since Wimbledon -- the most tour-level match-wins for any player in that timeframe -- and she finishes the year as the Olympic champion and at a new career-high ranking of No.5.

"This is tennis," Zheng said after the final. "You fight, but not always you are the one. But if you always keep going and keep in that spot, you will get your chance, I think. I mean tennis-wise, of course, always I need to improve. But just stay strong, and let's see."

Gabriela Dabrowski and Erin Routliffe: In their WTA Finals team debut last year, Dabrowski and Routliffe fell in the semifinals to Nicole Melichar-Martinez and Ellen Perez. This year, they avenged that loss in the exact same round.

Then, in Saturday's final, Dabrowski and Routliffe bested Katerina Siniakova and Taylor Townsend -- reversing this year's Wimbledon final result. After flipping two tough losses from the past year, the Canadian-New Zealand pairing hoisted the WTA Finals doubles trophy.

"We found some newfound perspective and we've learned to enjoy the hard moments and embrace the challenge," Routliffe told WTA Insider after the final. "We're trying to enjoy it no matter what, even if we aren't."

Barbora Krejcikova: After an up-and-down season, Barbora Krejcikova squeaked into the WTA Finals as a reigning Wimbledon champion who finished the year inside the Top 20. She backed her appearance up, winning her round-robin group to make the semifinals.

"I think I had a very interesting season," Krejcikova said after her Riyadh run ended. "I think even this tournament was really, really good for me. I think I played some good tennis, and I had some big wins, and I'm proud of myself."

Aryna Sabalenka: The top seed fell to Gauff in the Riyadh semifinals, but she was still able to attain one of her major goals, finishing as year-end World No.1 for the first time in her career.

Katerina Siniakova: The Czech finishes as year-end WTA Doubles World No.1 for the fourth time in her career. Like Sabalenka, Siniakova won two Grand Slam titles this year: Roland Garros with Coco Gauff and Wimbledon with Taylor Townsend.

Social Buzz

Past and present stars of women's tennis applauded Gauff's win in the gripping Riyadh final:

Notable Numbers

8: Coco Gauff is the first woman in the Open Era to win her first eight hard-court singles finals. Gauff is also the first woman since Serena Williams (12, between US Open 2013 and Cincinnati 2015) to win eight or more consecutive hard-court finals.

20: The 20-year-old Gauff is the youngest player to win the WTA Finals since 17-year-old Maria Sharapova in 2004, and the youngest American to win the WTA Finals since 20-year-old Serena Williams in 2001.

445: Zheng Qinwen finishes as this year's ace leader, with 445. Elena Rybakina finishes second with 358, followed by Sabalenka with 307.

3:04: Gauff's 3-hour and 4-minute win over Zheng in Riyadh was the second-longest WTA singles final of the season. Only Iga Swiatek's 3-hour and 11-minute victory over Aryna Sabalenka in Madrid was a longer final in 2024.

Hot Shots

Naturally, the elite eight gave us some of the finest hitting of the year in Riyadh. Enjoy this compilation:

From the Camera Roll

Well, it has to be THE iconic photo:

Next Up

That's a wrap on the 2024 Hologic WTA Tour season! But the Billie Jean King Cup starts this coming week, and there are still a number of WTA 125 events to come in November and December, including events in Charleston, S.C. and Colina, Chile starting Nov. 18. Follow along with those events' live streams at WTA Unlocked.