Coco Gauff’s unbeaten start to 2025 is over. So are her hopes of winning the Australian Open.
For Aryna Sabalenka, the quest for a third consecutive title in Melbourne, Australia, remains alive.
The third-seeded Gauff, 9-0 on the year and unbeaten in 13 straight matches entering the day, was swept by 11th-seeded Paula Badosa of Spain 7-5, 6-4 in the quarterfinals in Melbourne on Tuesday.
The 2023 U.S. Open champion dominated most of the stat sheet but was undone by mistakes. Most notably, she committed six double faults to Badosa’s two and nearly doubled Badosa in unforced errors (41-23).
The first 10 games were played evenly, with only two break points (both by Badosa in the third game, won by Gauff). But the 27-year-old Badosa finally broke the 20-year-old Gauff in the 11th game and put the set away in the next game.
Gauff, the third-ranked player in the world, again faltered on her serve, this time dropping serve in the first game of the second set. She gained it back by breaking Badosa to make it 2-2 but immediately dropped her next service game. Gauff soon fell behind 5-2, a deficit she could not overcome.
Gauff has been working on what she perceived to be the weaker parts of her game, including her serve, after the 2024 season.
“U.S.Open I needed to work on my serve,” Gauff said. “Not saying that my serve is where I want it to be, but I worked on it. Obviously a big improvement. So I want to continue working on that, continue working on playing aggressive margin.
“So I feel like I’m on the road to the right way, right path. … I’m not crushed, but obviously it does feel bad when you feel like you’re playing great tennis for the better start of this year to lose, but it is what it is. We’ll get back to work.”
Badosa’s strong play was the story of the match.
“Today I came in, and I wanted to play my best game, and I think I did it,” Badosa said after the match. “Coco, at the beginning, she was playing insane tennis, but I’m super proud of the level I gave (Tuesday).
“A year ago, I was here with my back (injury) that I didn’t know if I had to retire from this sport, and now I’m here, playing the best in the world. … I’m in the semifinals, and I never would think that a year later, I would be here.”
Badosa, the 2024 WTA Comeback Player of the Year, picked up her first career top-10 victory at a Grand Slam and will meet top-seeded Sabalenka, of Belarus, in her first career major semifinal.
Sabalenka earned her way with a 6-2, 2-6, 6-3 quarterfinal win over No. 27 seed Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova. The Russian pushed Sabalenka, who twice had to come from a service break down in the third set before rattling off wins in four of the final five games to advance.
The set Sabalenka dropped to Pavlyuchenkova was the first the two-time defending champion had lost in the tournament since the 2023 final. Sabalenka became the first player since Maria Sharapova in 2008 to reach 10 Grand Slam career semifinals, winning three of them.
Sabalenka admitted after the match that she struggled, especially in the windy conditions and lost her composure at times.
“I was all over the place. I’m really glad that at some point I was able to put myself back together, and I was able to, you know, just get back to the match,” she said. “I was able to keep fighting, keep trying, and I was able to turn around this match. It was really difficult one.
“I was just trying to figure out how to play in these conditions. I was struggling a lot with finding my rhythm, finding the solution in these conditions. It’s not about being scared. It’s about finding the way out. I was struggling not in the beginning, actually. In the second set I was struggling with finding the way, but then I found one way.
“Praying. I was just praying. No. I think the main solution was just to stay low and just try to put an extra ball back on that side and stay focused and play with the discipline.”
–Field Level Media
