In-form Coco Gauff serves notice with assured start to US Open title pursuit

Coco Gauff returned to Arthur Ashe Stadium beneath heavy rainfall on Tuesday night and cleared her opening hurdle at the US Open with a 6-3, 6-4 victory over Turkey's 54th-ranked Zeynep Sonmez, launching what the 22-year-old American regards as the most meaningful stretch of her career so far.

Gauff, seeded fourth in New York, opened the match briskly — crunching a pair of early aces in a love hold before a buzzing crowd — but Sonmez held her own in the muscular baseline exchanges across the opening five games. The American took control in the sixth, breaking without dropping a point, then served out the set after 33 minutes as rain hammered the closed roof overhead.

The second set proved less comfortable. Gauff broke immediately but Sonmez responded by attacking the net and breaking back for 2-all with a searing backhand winner. At 2-3, Gauff was forced to save three break points in a marathon 16-point service game, eventually escaping with a 115mph ace down the middle. “I knew if I could hold that game, I felt confident breaking the next game,” she said — a prediction that proved accurate when Sonmez double-faulted twice almost immediately to surrender the decisive break. Gauff closed out the match after one hour and 20 minutes.

The serve as bellwether

For Gauff, the serve has long been the bellwether of her overall game; when it deserts her, difficulties tend to spread to her groundstrokes. On Tuesday she landed 62 per cent of her first serves, reaching 125mph, and struck five aces against three double faults, winning 71 per cent of her first-serve points. More telling still, she won nearly two-thirds of the points behind her second serve, losing serve only once across the match. She described the transformation as gradual, built around a more consistent ball toss and subtle changes to her wrist position. “My serve looks different now,” she said.

The contrast with a year ago is marked. Gauff arrived at last year's US Open in the midst of a significant technical overhaul and came undone against Naomi Osaka in the fourth round. She has since reached the Wimbledon semi-finals for the first time and claimed her first title of 2026 in Cincinnati, evidence, she suggested, that the work was bearing fruit.

The ranking equation

The stakes extend well beyond Tuesday's result. Gauff is one of four women who could leave Flushing Meadows as WTA world No 1 — alongside current holder Aryna Sabalenka, Elena Rybakina, and Jessica Pegula. The arithmetic for Gauff is precise: she must win the US Open and Rybakina must be eliminated before the semi-finals.

Her second-round opponent will be either Daria Kasatkina or Paula Badosa, whose first-round match was suspended with Badosa leading 6-1, 5-4 when rain halted play on the outer courts. Despite the familiar weight of expectation — Gauff has spoken this week of trying to experience the US Open differently, with less fixation on results and more enjoyment of an occasion that once left her feeling relief rather than pride — Tuesday offered an early sign of a calmer disposition. “I don't know what put my mind at ease,” she said after a nervousness in the tunnel dissolved entirely during the warm-up. “It was just a weird feeling today that I felt pretty calm.”