How Coco Gauff pulled off a miracle marathon win over Zheng Qinwen in Riyadh

“Make it physical,” Coco Gauff’s last coach, Brad Gilbert, used to tell her, over and over and over until she didn’t want to hear it anymore.

Gauff cut Gilbert loose earlier this year, but his voice and his mantras may still have been rattling around somewhere in the back of her head during the championship match at the WTA Finals in Riyadh on Saturday. Gauff made it as physical as she could, and after three hours, three sets, and three separate comebacks, she prevailed.

To be fair, it wasn’t just Gauff who turned this final into the tennis version of a marathon mixed with a wrestling match. Her opponent, Zheng Qinwen, ran and swung and scrambled and fought every bit as hard. The 20-year-old Floridian and the 22-year-old Wuhan native were the two youngest players in the tour’s year-end championships, and they threw all of their youthful energy, strength, and stamina at each other, before Gauff won 3-6, 6-4, 7-6 (3).

Read More: Coco Gauff rallies against Zheng Qinwen for first WTA Finals title in Riyadh

In the end, it was the champion who collapsed onto the court, in a celebration that was equal parts joy, disbelief, and exhaustion. For 80 percent of this match, she looked nearly certain to walk away the loser.

Against most other opponents, Zheng and Gauff play opposing styles—Zheng attacks, Gauff defends. But facing each other, their games locked together until they were virtual mirror images. Both attacked the ball with pace and topspin—Zheng favored her forehand to the same degree that Gauff favored her backhand. And both bailed themselves out of trouble with clutch serving. The result was a stalemate. They stood in and slugged, and scrapped for every inch of territory they could get.

In each set, Zheng was able to impose her will first.

In the opening frame, she saved break points in each of her first two service games, and stayed steady until Gauff, who seemed to be out of answers from the baseline, went off the rails and was broken at love.

In the second set, Zheng broke again and went up 2-0, then went up 15-30 on Gauff’s serve. Gauff was flummoxed by this stage—unable to make anything happen in rallies, she stopped moving her feet and missed a couple of backhands badly.

That’s when Zheng made the mistake of taking her foot off the gas.

At 30-30, instead of continuing to pound the ball as she had been, Zheng tried a drop shot. Against the tour’s fastest player. Gauff eagerly tracked it down, ripped a backhand winner, and screamed “Let’s go!” On the next point, she fired an ace and screamed “Come on!” In a flash, Gauff had gone from despondent to fired up. It wasn’t long before she had seized the initiative in the rallies, broken Zheng again, and closed out the set.

The pattern repeated itself two more times in the final set. Zheng went up a break at 2-0, then again at 5-3. This time, serving for the match at 5-4, Zheng pumped the gas pedal too hard. She missed a forehand wide, a backhand long, a forehand long, and a backhand into the net. Each time, she pulled the trigger too quickly.

“At the end of the match, when I fell on the floor, I didn't think I was going to do that,” Gauff said. "I kind of made a promise to myself that I will only save that for Grand Slams. But honestly, to the way the match went, I was like, ‘I'm just tired. I just want to lay on the ground.’”

As for Zheng, her failed service game at 5-4 in the third seemed to linger in her mind.

“This match is very endurance, instead of, you know, explosive tennis,” Zheng said. “Yes, a lot of physical, but I would say sometimes, maybe in this match, I wasn’t that patient.”

This was Gauff’s second-biggest career title, after the 2023 US Open. Like that one, it came in a rush, immediately after hiring a new coach—Gilbert last year, Matt Daly this year. Her level seemed to be at rock bottom in August; by November, she was back at her sometimes error-prone, but always competitive best.

Read More: Coco Gauff has already won a WTA title at every level in her career after victory at WTA Finals

Gauff won Riyadh while also trying out changes to her serve and forehand. But she also won this tournament by going back to her strengths and living and dying inside her comfort zone. She ran, she defended, she scrapped, she hit her forehands high and heavy, and drove through her backhands with pace. She didn’t try to be aggressive at all costs. She was frustrated at times with the mistakes she couldn’t fix, but she stuck with her brand of tennis and it worked.

“I know I was like a couple points away from losing,” Gauff said after her miracle marathon win. “But, you know, I just tried to stay in the moment, honestly, and I'm really proud of myself.”