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Sports · US Open 2026 · Women's Singles · Quarter-finals
Coco Gauff vs Mirra Andreeva
Quarter-finals
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My pick: Coco Gauff to advance · locked 2026-09-08 12:20 UTCPrediction
Gauff has won all five of their meetings, and the number is less useful than it looks: four of the five were on clay, and the one hard court was the second round here in 2023, when Andreeva was sixteen and ranked outside the top fifty. Clay lengthens the rally and rewards the returner, which is precisely where Gauff's advantage lies; a hard court raises the value of the serve, which is where Andreeva has improved most. On the WTA's own 2026 splits she is the better server of the two — she holds 74.8 per cent of her service games to Gauff's 69.7, saves 60.7 per cent of break points to 54.1, wins nearly six more points in every hundred behind a second serve, and has thrown 110 fewer double faults across a comparable number of service games. So the record says 5-0 and the matchup does not. What argues for Gauff anyway is the state she is in: ten straight wins, twenty straight sets, nine consecutive matches in straight sets for the first time in her career, and a Cincinnati title behind it. Hard-court Elo has her 2087 to 1962, about 67-33. Two smaller things cut her way as well. They have spent the same time on court — 6h21 to 6h17 — but Andreeva's was distributed as six games lost in two matches and then a 2h27 knife-fight, and Andreeva has not played a singles match on Arthur Ashe this fortnight, while Gauff has played all four rounds there. I take Gauff, without much conviction about the margin.
The case for Coco Gauff
66% to winGauff has not dropped a set here and has not dropped one anywhere in twenty, the last going in Cincinnati, a tournament she then won. Nine straight matches in straight sets is a career first. She is the 2023 champion on this court, she has played all four of her rounds on it, and she is into a twelfth Grand Slam quarter-final at 22 — since 2000 only Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova reached more before turning 23. She has beaten Andreeva five times out of five and has never lost a set to her outside their first meeting. The fourth round had ended her last two US Opens, so this is the specific hurdle she has just cleared, and she cleared it hitting two double faults in ninety-three minutes, which for the player who leads the tour in them this season is the most encouraging number of her fortnight. If she wins the title and Rybakina loses before the semi-finals, she is world No. 1 for the first time.
The case for Mirra Andreeva
34% to winAndreeva is 19, the reigning Roland Garros champion, and the youngest player left in the draw by more than two years. This is her first US Open quarter-final at a tournament that had never opened for her — second round, second round, third round, and by her own account a place where she could never find her rhythm — and it is her fifth Grand Slam quarter-final across three of the four majors. She has six WTA titles before her twentieth birthday. Her fortnight has been the most economical of anyone's here: she lost six games in her first two matches combined, and then, when Anastasia Potapova took the first set off her and led the fight for two hours, she stopped waiting and started dictating, which is what she said afterwards she had told herself to do. On the season's serving numbers she is the better server in this match on every measure that matters — holds, break points saved, second-serve points won, double faults — and she is coached by Conchita Martinez, who won a major from the other side of a heavy favourite's record.
Both cases written 2026-09-08, 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.
Tale of the tape
Coco GauffMirra AndreevaPlayer vitals: US Open official player feed (usopen.org) and Tennis Abstract career match logs · as of 2026-09-04.
Career head-to-head: WTA official head-to-head record and Tennis Abstract tour-level match logs · as of 2026-09-08.
The briefing
Storylines
- Gauff leads 5-0, but four of the five meetings were on clay. The only hard-court meeting was the second round of the 2023 US Open, when Andreeva was 16 and unseeded, and Gauff won it 6-3 6-2.
- Aggregator head-to-head pages disagree with each other here — one reads 5-1 and another 4-0, because some pool exhibitions and team events and others lag. The WTA's own head-to-head publishes five meetings and five Gauff wins, and Andreeva has no team-event route to a sixth: Russia has been barred from the United Cup and the Billie Jean King Cup since 2022.
- It is Andreeva's first US Open quarter-final. Her previous best here was the third round, and she has said she never worked out why she could not find her rhythm in New York.
- Andreeva has not played a singles match on Arthur Ashe this fortnight — her four rounds were on Louis Armstrong and Stadium 17, and her only Ashe appearance was a mixed doubles semi-final during Fan Week. Gauff has played all four of her rounds there.
- Both arrive with almost exactly the same mileage: Gauff 6 hours 21 minutes, Andreeva 6 hours 17. The distribution is not the same — Andreeva lost six games in her first two matches and then spent 2h27 beating Anastasia Potapova, a match that ended with Potapova hurting her left knee at 3-5 in the third and not winning another point.
- The top six seeds have all reached the US Open women's quarter-finals for the first time since 1998. Five of the eight are major champions: Sabalenka, Rybakina, Noskova, Andreeva and Gauff.
- Gauff can still finish the fortnight at world No. 1 for the first time, but it takes two results, not one — she has to win the title and Rybakina has to lose before the semi-finals.
- Three American women reached the last eight, and Jessica Pegula and Emma Navarro play each other, so at most two can reach the semi-finals and Gauff has to be one of them.
Head to head
Five meetings, all to Gauff — and four of them on clay. Roland Garros 2023, 6-7(5) 6-1 6-1; the US Open second round in 2023, 6-3 6-2, the only one on a hard court and the only straightforward one; the Madrid quarter-final in 2025, 7-5 6-1; the Rome quarter-final in 2025, 6-4 7-6(5); and the Rome quarter-final in May 2026, 4-6 6-2 6-4, in which Andreeva took the first set. Gauff's own reading is that the record has leaned her way but that every match could almost have gone either way, and that only the 2023 meeting was smooth, when Andreeva was very young.
Source: WTA official head-to-head record and Tennis Abstract tour-level match logs · as of 2026-09-08.
Watch: Quarter-final coverage runs across ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC, with ESPN Deportes in Spanish — and every court streams in the ESPN app. By this round the tennis has narrowed to the two show courts, so a broadcast window is very likely. (ESPN press-room release and listings, as of 2026-08-27)
Court & schedule: Not yet assigned. The US Open posts each day's order of play the evening before, and this match has not reached the board yet. (Official US Open order-of-play release cadence, as of 2026-09-08)
Weather: The first four quarter-finals are played today in sunshine at 81°F with nothing in the forecast at all, and tonight is partly cloudy at 68°F. Wednesday, for the other four, is mostly sunny and 83°F with a 5% shower chance on either side of it. Thursday is where the week turns, and it has hardened overnight — the first semi-final day now carries a 44% chance of showers and thunderstorms, up from 31% yesterday evening, and holds at 44% into Thursday night. Friday, for the second semi-finals, is sunny and 77°F. Ashe and Armstrong close their roofs and play on; everything else waits. (National Weather Service New York forecast, as of 2026-09-08)
Venue: USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, Flushing Meadows, New York — hard.
At this Stage
The quarter-finals are the last eight, played across Tuesday and Wednesday. Everyone still here has won four matches on these courts, which is enough that seedings have stopped explaining anything and the form of the fortnight explains most of it. Four of the eight are gone within two days; the other four play for a place in the final.
