Coco Gauff becomes teenager to reach most quarterfinals at Dubai Tennis Championships

She surpassed Russia’s Lina Krasnoroutskaya to make the record her own.

Third seed Coco Gauff assured herself of a third appearance in the quarterfinals of the Dubai Tennis Championships 2024. She is the first teen to reach the milestone, going past Lina Krasnoroutskaya of Russia, who did it twice. The now-retired Russian had reached the quarterfinals in Dubai in 2001 and 2003. World No. 3, Gauff, reaches the last eight at Dubai in 2021 and 2023.

Gauff sent home former World No. 1 Karolina Pliskova with a three-set win in their first hard-court match. The 19-year-old American fought back from a set down to win 2-6 6-4 6-3. Gauff edges ahead in their head-to-head 2-1 after outlasting Pliskova in 1 hour, 53 minutes on day four. Pliskova came into her round of 16 match against the World No. 3 on an 11-match winning streak.

The win was not without controversy. A confrontation with the chair umpire in the seventh game of the second set took place when Bacchi called Gauff’s serve out. Pliskova’s return had landed wide. Gauff appealed, and replays showed the ball had landed in, yet the umpire refused to award the point to the American and made the two players replay the point.

The US Open defending champion rallied to win and brushed off nine double faults and the confrontation with chair umpire Pierre Bacchi. She will now play Anna Kalinskaya, who defeated Jelena Ostapenko 6-4, 7-5 in their third-round fixture. Kalinskaya will be playing her first quarter-final at the WTA 1000 event on her debut at the Middle Eastern tournament.

Ostapenko won the Dubai Tennis Championships title in 2022 against Veronika Kudermetova.

Gauff and Kalinskaya will be meeting for the first time in their careers. The American is 10-2 this year and mounted a successful defence of her ASB Classic title at Auckland, besides reaching the Australian Open semi-final. 

Kalinskaya reached the quarterfinals of the Australian Open, losing to eventual finalist China’s Qinwen Zheng. She jumped from World No. 80 at the beginning of January to a career-high World No. 38 courtesy of her quarter-final run at Melbourne. She is currently ranked 40th on the WTA tour.

In other results, top seed Iga Swiatek breezed past Elina Svitolina with a 6-1, 6-4 victory to earn herself a semi-final clash with Qinwen Zheng. Should Gauff and Swiatek get through their respective quarter-final matches, they will meet in the semis in a rematch of last year.

The Pole is on track for back-to-back wins in the Middle Eastern segment of the tour. She won the Qatar Open in Doha last week. Both Gauff and Swiatek will be eyeing their maiden win at the desert kingdom.

Gauff has a lone victory against the Polish No. 1 in her head-to-head, with Swiatek winning seven times in a row. The American defeated Swiatek in the Cincinnati semifinals last season.  

Elena Rybakina(4) and Marketa Vondrousova(7) are the other two seeded players apart from Gauff (3) and Swiatek (1) to make it to the round of eight.

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