Gauff overcame a mid-match wobble to keep her bid for a maiden grand slam on track
Coco Gauff’s storming summer continued as she marched into the quarter-finals of the US Open, ending the romantic story of Caroline Wozniacki’s comeback slam along the way.
Wozniacki was trying to emulate Kim Clijsters’s fairytale from the 2009 US Open – which saw the 32-year-old win the first major she played after retiring, starting a family, and then realising that she still had a yen for elite competition.
At 33, Wozniacki is now at the final stage of the same journey. And she performed more than respectably here, taking out the two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova on the way to the last 16.
Unfortunately, Wozniacki’s game lacks the explosiveness that allowed Clijsters to pull off that unforgettable victory 14 years ago. A victory which, ironically, Clijsters completed by beating a 19-year-old Wozniacki in the final.