LAWRENCE SMITH
Coco Gauff needed just 65 minutes to win her semifinal against Emma Navarro.
Coco Gauff and Elina Svitolina have both made it through to the final of Sunday’s ASB Classic, but took very different paths towards it on Saturday.
Gauff defeated fellow American Emma Navarro 6-3 6-1 in just 62 minutes, while Svitolina batted for two hours 23 minutes for her 2-6 6-4 6-3 victory over China’s Wang Xiyu.
So no prizes for guessing who will be the fresher player in Sunday’s final. Especially as Svitolina had a monumental three-set battle with Emma Raducanu on Thursday night.
Gauff’s match was like all the other ones this week. She dominated the rallies, her serve was almost unhittable, and she stepped in to take the ball early, cutting down Navarro’s time.
The win makes it back-to-back finals at the Classic for Gauff and on Sunday she’ll be attempting to defend a WTA title for the first time in her career.
Phil Walter/Getty Images
Elina Svitolina managed to win her three set match against Wang Xiyu despite suffering with a hip problem.
“It feels good to be back here in the final,” Gauff said.
“I’m really happy with how I played today and hopefully I can keep it up for one more match.”
As Gauff has pretty much thrashed everyone this week, just like she did last year, it’s hard to compare performances.
But Navarro is certainly the best player she’s been up against this week, so logic would suggest this was her best performance so far, and Gauff agreed.
“I thought today was [the best],” she said.
“The last two matches I’ve played pretty well and I practised with her (Navarro) earlier this week.
“We had a quality level practice set. So I knew going into today I had to play well and I did what I wanted to do, which is not always the case.”
Gauff looked tremendous in all the shots she played against Navarro. Well, all apart from one. Her drop shot hasn’t been on for most of this week, and they’ve invariably ended up on her side of the net.
“Today there was one really bad one,” Gauff smiled.
“I don’t even know what that was, it landed on my side. It has to be the worst shot of the year, they need to pull that up at the end of the year.
“I couldn’t do anything but laugh. Sometimes It’s like that. I was working on my drop shots, I’m not Carlos Alcaraz. But the goal is to be somewhere with the drop shots.
“I did hit one good one today, so I’m happy with that. Hopefully, I can continue to get better, but that one bounced two feet in front of me, it was hilarious. I rate my drop shots a six out of 10.
“But they’ve saved my life in some scenarios, so I can’t get too upset at them.”
There wasn’t much laughing from Svitolina during her match. The Ukrainian had a hard battle against the resilient Wang.
The Chinese took the first set comfortably, as Svitolina struggled with a hip problem and she needed to go off court for medical treatment.
She continued to look in pain in the second set, but her movement started to steadily improve. It’s questionable how many other players would have pulled the pin after that opening set, but it was no surprise Svitolina battled on.
For the third set, Svitolina was back to her best, making Wang wear out a path along the baseline as she was moved from side to side.
Although Svitolina was broken when serving for the match at 5-1 and Wang held in the next game, Svitolina got the job done when she served next.
