Beijing WTA final preview: Coco Gauff vs. Karolina Muchova

“Has this week been, like, my best tennis?” Coco Gauff asked, rhetorically, after she advanced to the China Open final with a three-set win over Paula Badosa on Saturday.

Clearly, the American wasn’t looking for anyone, including herself, to say yes. Gauff has been forced to come from a set down three times so far in Beijing. She lost the first set to Naomi Osaka, then won the second before Osaka retired. She lost the opening set to Yulia Starodubtseva, before coming back to win 6-2 in the third. Against Badosa, Gauff started even more slowly. She went down a set and a break, and then saved four break points to keep falling behind 4-1 in the second. The fact that she went on to won 10 of the last 12 games was a surprise, even to her.

“I’m happy to be in the final; I wasn’t expecting it,” Gauff said.

Coco recently split with coach Brad Gilbert, and started up with Matt Daly. She hadn’t made a final since January, and she said she started this tournament thinking of it as a “practice week.”

But Gauff won’t be the only one feeling pleased, and a little surprised, to have survived until Sunday.

“Making a final here, it’s just so nice, such a nice feeling,” said Muchova, who missed the first six months of 2024 with a wrist injury. “I said it in the past, I didn’t know how this year is going to look like, if I will play, if I will not play, what my level is going to be.”

Muchova has also had a near-defeat experience in Beijing; in the quarterfinals she edged top seed Aryna Sabalenka 6-4 in the third set. But she looked very much in form in that match, as well as in her 6-3, 6-4 win over home-country favorite Zheng Qinwen in the semifinals.

However these two players feel about their results here, it isn’t a shock for the rest of us to see them play for a 1000-level title. They did the same thing last summer in Cincinnati. Gauff won that match 6-3, 6-4, and then won the rematch in the US Open semifinals three weeks later, 6-4, 7-5.

Looking at their relative talent levels, as well as their current form, may lead you to think that Muchova is due for a win. The Czech is a smoother and more complete player, with more ways to beat her opponents while Gauff has two serious liabilities in her ever-erratic serve and forehand.

This week Muchova kept Sabalenka and Zheng, two Top Tenners, off-balance by mixing unpredictable forays to net with equally hard-to-read drop shots. She has seemed comfortable running around to hit penetrating, inside-out forehands on the Beijing hard courts.

Gauff, meanwhile, has fallen back on old faithful: Her competitive grit. Daly seems like a more upbeat presence than Gilbert in the coaching box, and that appears to have helped Gauff keep her head up even when she has trailed in the score. Down a set, a break, and four more break points against Badosa, Gauff was one miss from defeat. But she never gave Badosa that miss.

Gauff’s two wins over Muchova came in ideal conditions for her. She was playing in front of raucous American crowds, and she was in the middle of her magical summer of 2023. Both times she waited for errors to come from Muchova’s racquet, and both times she got them. This time I think Muchova will be happy to face Gauff outside of the U.S., and won’t be as generous with her donations. Winner: Muchova