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Coco Gauff recently shared her thoughts on returning to Saudi Arabia for the prestigious year-end WTA Finals. Gauff, the World No. 3, is the defending WTA Finals champion and has already qualified for the 2025 edition of the year-end event, which is set to commence from Saturday, November 1.
In 2024, the tournament was held for the very first time in Saudi Arabia, and it is set to be hosted by the country in the Middle East this year and next year as well. There were question marks over how the event would turn out last year considering the fact that no professional women's sporting tournament had been hosted by the country before. However, according to Gauff, the 2024 WTA Finals was a success.
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Speaking to Arab News, Coco Gauff said:
"I definitely think that for Riyadh, it was smart to just do three years, just to test the waters and see how it goes, considering that there was never a women’s professional event there. But from a player perspective, it definitely seemed like it was successful."
The two-time singles Major champion also envisioned the possibility of Saudi Arabia hosting the WTA Finals beyond 2026.
"I don’t know how it was logistically and all that, but from my experience, it seems successful. So I wouldn’t mind coming back in the future for longer than three years," she added.
Coco Gauff became WTA Finals champion in 2024 after tough battle against Zheng Qinwen
In the final of the 2024 WTA Finals, Coco Gauff clashed against Zheng Qinwen, and the American and the Chinese stars produced a memorable encounter. Zheng took the first set 6-3 to put herself in pole position for winning the championship match. However, Gauff, showing her typical grit and competitiveness, took the match to a decider after winning the second set 6-4.
The deciding set went to a tiebreak and here, the American dominated. Ultimately, she clinched the set 7-6(2) to become the youngest WTA Finals champion since Maria Sharapova in 2004. Following her title triumph, which earned her a staggering $4.8 million paycheck, Gauff said:
"This means a lot to me. This is the first professional women's tennis event here in Saudi Arabia and I'll forever be etched in history in that standard."
Recently, Coco Gauff further cemented her place as one of the elite women's tennis players in the world right now with an emphatic title triumph at the WTA 1000 Wuhan Open.
