# Gauff's Great Escape Ends in Heartbreak at the WTA Finals Source: SportsBriefly (https://sportsbriefly.com) Canonical URL: https://sportsbriefly.com/en/tennis/gauff-s-great-escape-ends-in-heartbreak-at-the-wta-finals-2026-11-13-1lf1qjm Language: en Published: 2026-11-13T03:13:01.955+00:00 Updated: 2026-11-13T03:13:01.99688+00:00 > Coco Gauff rallied from 5-1 down in the second set to beat Marta Kostyuk 6-4, 7-5 at the WTA Finals in Indian Wells. ## TL;DR - Coco Gauff rallied from 5-1 down in the second set to beat Marta Kostyuk 6-4, 7-5 at the WTA Finals in Indian Wells. - Gauff saved three set points and won the final six games to complete the straight-sets escape. - Jessica Pegula's 7-6 (2), 4-6, 7-5 win over Linda Noskova hours later eliminated Gauff on set percentage. - Pegula faces Mirra Andreeva in the semifinals, while group winner Noskova awaits the Sabalenka-Svitolina winner. ## Key points - Coco Gauff rallied from 5-1 down in the second set to beat Marta Kostyuk 6-4, 7-5 at the WTA Finals in Indian Wells. - Gauff saved three set points and won the final six games to complete the straight-sets escape. - Jessica Pegula's 7-6 (2), 4-6, 7-5 win over Linda Noskova hours later eliminated Gauff on set percentage. - Pegula faces Mirra Andreeva in the semifinals, while group winner Noskova awaits the Sabalenka-Svitolina winner. Coco Gauff produced one of the great escapes of the 2026 WTA Finals on Thursday, rallying from 5-1 down in the second set to beat Marta Kostyuk 6-4, 7-5 at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden. She saved three set points, won the final six games of the match and kept her semifinal hopes alive for a few precious hours. Then Jessica Pegula took them away. Pegula's 7-6 (2), 4-6, 7-5 victory over Linda Noskova later on Thursday night sent the American through to the last four instead, and Gauff's remarkable comeback became the final match of her 2026 season. Gauff, the 22-year-old world No. 4 and the 2024 WTA Finals champion, knew exactly what was at stake when she walked onto court. She had beaten Pegula in three sets in her opening group match and lost in straight sets to Noskova, so only a win over Kostyuk would leave her with any chance of reaching the semifinals. ## A comeback from the brink The first set followed a familiar pattern for Gauff this week: authority, then a wobble, then authority again. She led 5-2 before Kostyuk broke back to close within a game, but Gauff answered immediately, breaking back with a gutsy crosscourt backhand volley winner to take the set 6-4. The second set, though, threatened to undo all of it. Kostyuk raced to a 4-0 lead and then to 5-1, and Gauff needed treatment on her back during the set as her movement stiffened. At 5-1 down, Gauff was already thinking about a third set. "I was fully prepared to play a third set there," she said afterwards, and few in the crowd would have disagreed with her. Kostyuk held three set points in the seventh game, each one a chance to force the decider. Gauff saved all three, held serve with a crosscourt forehand winner, and something shifted. She broke Kostyuk twice to level the set at 5-5, held for a 6-5 lead and completed the turnaround when Kostyuk netted a forehand. Six games in a row, from 5-1 down to 7-5, in just under one hour and 40 minutes of tennis. ![Coco Gauff practising at the 2026 US Open](https://api.sportsbriefly.com/storage/v1/object/public/media/api/1794539566309-sj7ler-tennis-inside1-2026-11-13-morning.jpg) Kostyuk, the Ukrainian who entered the tournament as the first alternate after world No. 1 Elena Rybakina withdrew through illness, had already been eliminated before the match began. She had lost her first two group matches, to Noskova and Pegula, and she arrived at Indian Wells this year with a Madrid title and a French Open semifinal to her name. She failed to win a set in her three matches at the event, and this one will sting the most: three set points in hand, a 5-1 lead, and a match that slipped away in six straight games. ## The match that decided her fate Gauff's fate was never entirely in her own hands, and the evening session made that painfully clear. She needed Noskova, the Wimbledon champion and the group winner, to beat Pegula in the final Group 1 match. Instead, Pegula produced an escape of her own. The American saved a match point while trailing 5-4 in the deciding set, won the final three games and beat Noskova 7-6 (2), 4-6, 7-5 in a contest that lasted almost three hours. The result left Noskova, Pegula and Gauff all tied on two wins and one defeat in Group 1, and the tie was broken on the percentage of sets won. Noskova finished first and Pegula second; Gauff finished third and was eliminated. The 2024 champion watched her tournament end from the sidelines, hours after saving it on the court. There was a particular cruelty in the identity of the player who ended it. Pegula is Gauff's former doubles partner and her friend, and Gauff had beaten her in their opening group match. Pegula's reward for the win is a semifinal against Mirra Andreeva, the French Open champion who has already won Group 2. Noskova, meanwhile, awaits the winner of Friday's decisive Group 2 match between Aryna Sabalenka and Elina Svitolina. ## What the escape still means Gauff's season ends with the strange double image of this match: the champion who refused to lose, and the player who did everything right and still went home. She finished the round robin with two wins from three matches, beat two of the three opponents in her group, and lost only to the group winner. But the numbers in Group 1 were unforgiving, and a 2-1 record was not enough when two other players finished with the same record and a better set percentage. ![Coco Gauff at the 2023 Washington Open](https://api.sportsbriefly.com/storage/v1/object/public/media/api/1794539578787-ewiqep-tennis-inside2-2026-11-13-morning.jpg) The comeback itself deserves to stand apart from the elimination that followed it. Saving three set points from 5-1 down, while carrying a back problem and with her season on the line, is the kind of tennis that explains why Gauff has already won the biggest titles in the sport. She found her forehand when it mattered and refused to accept the third set she had already resigned herself to playing. "I was fully prepared to play a third set there," she said. She never had to play one. Saving a match point and winning the last three games against a Wimbledon champion is a semifinal statement in itself, and her meeting with Andreeva now shapes up as one of the matches of the tournament. For Gauff, the wait begins for 2027, and for another chance at a title she won in 2024 and came within a set-percentage calculation of challenging again. The escape will be remembered. So, unfortunately for her, will the arithmetic that followed it. Mentions: Coco Gauff, Marta Kostyuk, Jessica Pegula, Linda Noskova, WTA Finals, Indian Wells, Mirra Andreeva, Aryna Sabalenka, Elina Svitolina, Elena Rybakina, French Open, Wimbledon, Group 1 ## Sources - [reuters.com](https://www.reuters.com/sports/tennis/gauff-beats-kostyuk-awaits-pegula-result-wta-finals-2026-11-12/) - [nbcsports.com](https://www.nbcsports.com/tennis/news/coco-gauff-storms-back-from-5-1-down-to-beat-marta-kostyuk-at-the-wta-finals) - [sportsnet.ca](https://www.sportsnet.ca/wta/article/coco-gauff-storms-back-to-beat-marta-kostyuk-at-wta-finals/)