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Sports · US Open 2026 · Women's Singles · Round of 128
Coco Gauff vs Zeynep Sonmez — 6-3 6-4
 Coco Gauff✓ | 6 | 6 |
 Zeynep Sonmez | 3 | 4 |
Final · Tuesday, September 1, 2026 · Round of 128
Result
Coco Gauff has led the WTA's double-fault count all season — 308 of them before this match — and served three. The 2023 champion won 6-3, 6-4 in eighty minutes on a closed-roof Arthur Ashe, one of only two courts in use as rain took out most of day three. She faced no break point in the first set. In the second she broke early, was broken back for 2-2, then held a nine-minute game through six deuces and three break points for 3-3, and broke immediately afterwards when Sonmez double-faulted. "I knew if I could hold that game, I felt confident breaking the next game," Gauff said. Sonmez, 24 and ranked 53rd, was playing on Ashe for the first time and matched Gauff for winners, eighteen each; the two had been scheduled to practise together and cancelled fifteen minutes beforehand when the draw paired them. Gauff, who rebuilt her serve with the biomechanist Gavin MacMillan and won Cincinnati last month, can leave New York as world No. 1 if she wins the title.
Coco GauffRows the source hadn’t published are left off rather than guessed.
At this Stage
Round of 128, and the home game begins: Gauff — the 2023 champion, fresh off the Cincinnati title — opens the campaign American tennis measures its summers by. Her quarter is the bracket's showpiece: the seedings point toward Andreeva, the Roland-Garros champion, in the quarter-finals, with the Kasatkina–Badosa survivor first. Sönmez gets the Ashe debut nobody requests and everybody remembers. Sunday through Tuesday.
What we know now
Court: Arthur Ashe Stadium
Match length: 1:20
Watch: ESPN · ESPN2 · ABC · ESPN app
What I said beforehand
The preview, frozen before the first serve. Clearly dated, never rewritten — that's the deal that makes the pick worth anything.
Gauff. The fourth seed arrives as the Cincinnati champion — the tune-up title, won two weeks ago — with a 41–13 season, two majors on the shelf including this one in 2023, and the fastest legs in the sport still setting her floor. Sönmez is a worthy first opponent: the Turkish No. 52's 29–19 season is honest tour production and her flat ball-striking beat real fields all summer. But the gap here is structural. Gauff's serve — the stat line's one recurring question — is the only door, and Sönmez's return game is not built to force it. The champion of 2023 opens as the tournament's form pick behind only the top two; her Cincinnati fortnight suggests the serve wobbles have quieted at the right time. Gauff in two.
The case for Coco Gauff
89% to winGauff is the 2023 champion here, the reigning Cincinnati champion, and the owner of a 41–13 season at 22 — with the best court coverage in the women's game and a 194–76 hard-court record. Her floor wins this match even on a bad serving day; her ceiling ended the tune-up with a trophy two weeks ago.
The case for Zeynep Sonmez
11% to winSönmez arrives in the best form of her career — 29 wins, a game with no fear of pace, and the freedom of an opponent nobody gives a chance. Gauff's double-fault clusters remain the tour's best-documented vulnerability; camp on the second serve and swing, because there is nothing to lose and one set changes everything.
Both cases written 2026-08-28, before the first ball — frozen into the record exactly as written, whatever the result. The percentages are mine — opinions with a percent sign on. They add to 100 because tennis has no draw to hide the rounding in.
My locked pick: Coco Gauff to advance ✓ RIGHT
“The Cincinnati champion's form, the 2023 title's pedigree, and a 41-win season — the serve is the only question, and Sönmez can't ask it loudly enough.”
Locked 2026-08-28 06:15 UTC — rendered verbatim from the pick ledger; never a fresher, hedged version
Tale of the tape
Coco GauffZeynep SonmezPlayer vitals: US Open official player feed (usopen.org) and Tennis Abstract career match logs · as of 2026-08-28.
Career head-to-head: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-08-27.
Storylines
- Gauff won the Cincinnati Open two weeks ago — the hard-court tune-up title — and opens in New York as the 2023 champion and fourth seed.
- Her two majors (US Open 2023, Roland-Garros 2025) came at 19 and 21; at 22 she is already the veteran of the draw's youth movement.
- Sönmez, the Turkish No. 52, brings a 29-win season into her first meeting with a top-five player at a major.
Head to head
Never met — Gauff's top-five orbit and Sönmez's climb hadn't crossed. The first look comes with the largest audience either has played to this year.
Source: Tennis Abstract career match logs (tour-level) · as of 2026-08-27.
Court & schedule: Arthur Ashe Stadium, Tuesday 1 September in the night session. The US Open posts each day's order of play the evening before; this one is on the board. (Official US Open order of play, as of 2026-08-30)
Weather: Sunday — the men's final, and the last match of the fortnight — was forecast at 78°F with showers and thunderstorms 95% likely, the wettest day of the two weeks and the one day that could not be pushed back. The rain came in the morning and stopped before the final, which Ashe played with its roof open. It cleared from there: 15% overnight, 15% Monday, then dry and sunny. (National Weather Service New York forecast, as of 2026-09-13)
Venue: USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, Flushing Meadows, New York — hard.