Coco Gauff, Taylor Fritz lead Team USA into United Cup final, Team Poland awaits

Coco Gauff and Taylor Fritz both won their singles matches against the Czechs on Saturday to send Team USA into the United Cup final.

It’s the second time the Americans have reached the United Cup final, having won the team event in its inaugural year in 2023.

Gauff kicked things off by holding off Karolina Muchova, 6-1, 6-4.

Muchova’s one of the biggest upset artists on the women’s tour—she just beat No. 4-ranked Jasmine Paolini a few days ago, for instance—but she’s never solved Gauff’s game, now 0-4 in her career against the American, and 0-8 in sets. None of those sets went to a tie-break.

Things got a little dicey in the end as Gauff originally led by a set and a break, 6-1, 4-2, when Muchova got the break back to even the second set up at 4-all, but Gauff won two quick games to end it.

“It’s never easy playing Karolina,” the WTA No. 3 said afterwards in her on-court interview. “Kind of the whole match I was intense and focused, so I think that made the difference today.

“I’m happy to get my team off to a good start.”

The second match wasn’t so straightforward, with Fritz advancing past Tomas Machac by retirement, 6-7 (4), 6-5, after Machac was forced to retire from the match due to cramping.

About 20 minutes earlier, Machac actually held two match points with Fritz serving to stay in the match at 2-5 in the second set, Fritz saving them both with unreturnable serves—the American would eventually win the next four games in a row and was serving up 6-5, 15-0 when the Czech approached the umpire and decided to retire.

“That was obviously a crazy match, very physical—that’s not the way I wanted it to end, but we’re happy to be back in the finals again. He said he’d been cramping for a couple of games already,” Fritz said.

“It’s really humid here. That’s something I was really thinking of as a possibility, if I could win that set, take it to a third, I was thinking someone might start cramping. It was tough conditions.”

The mixed doubles match saw Americans Denis Kudla and Desirae Krawczyk beat Czechs Patrik Rikl and Gabriela Knutson, 7-5, 6-0.

Awaiting Team USA in the final will be Team Poland, after Iga Swiatek and Hubert Hurkacz both won their singles matches against Kazakhstan earlier in the day. They ended up with a 3-0 victory after Jan Zielinski and Maja Chwalinska beat Alexander Shevchenko and Zhibek Kulambayeva in the mixed doubles match, 6-4, 6-1.

Like Team USA, Team Poland are also through to their second United Cup final, having finished runners-up to Germany last year.