Caty McNally has reached two Grand Slam finals and won nine tour titles, and almost nobody outside the sport could tell you that. All of it came in doubles, which is the part of professional tennis that generates trophies without generating recognition. In singles, where the recognition lives, she has never won a tour-level title and has spent most of her career ranked between 50 and 100.
That split is the story of her career so far, and it is why the American hard-court swing matters to her more than to most players at her ranking. It is where she made her name, where she has done her best singles work, and where the sport’s only merit-based route into the US Open main draw is decided.
Background
Catherine McNally was born on Nov. 20, 2001 in Madeira, Ohio, a suburb east of Cincinnati, and she is still identified with the city that hosts one of the two American Masters-level events. She stands 5 feet 11 inches and plays right-handed with a two-handed backhand. Her mother, Lynn, a former player, has coached her throughout. Her older brother, John, played college tennis at Ohio State, spent a short spell on the professional circuit and retired in 2022; their mother coached him too.
She turned professional in 2019 and made her first significant impression that summer in Washington, reaching the singles semifinals for her first tour-level main-draw wins and taking the doubles title with Coco Gauff. The pair had a combined age of 33 at the time.
The Gauff Partnership
McNally and Gauff played together as juniors and carried the partnership onto the tour, winning three titles and reaching the 2021 US Open final, where they lost to Samantha Stosur and Zhang Shuai. The pairing drew attention out of proportion to the results because both were teenagers and because Gauff was already the most-watched young player in the sport. It also gave McNally a platform that her singles ranking would not have provided.
She returned to the US Open final the following year with Taylor Townsend, losing to Barbora Krejcikova and Katerina Siniakova. Two US Open finals in two years, with two different partners, is the clearest evidence that the doubles record is hers rather than a function of whoever she was standing next to.
Nine Titles and a Career High of No. 11
Her nine doubles titles have come with eight different partners across seven seasons: Luxembourg and Washington with Gauff in 2019, Charleston with Hailey Baptiste and Parma with Gauff in 2021, St. Petersburg with Anna Kalinskaya and Ostrava with Alycia Parks in 2022, Merida with Diane Parry in 2023, Cluj-Napoca with Asia Muhammad in 2024, and Charleston with Desirae Krawczyk in 2026. She reached No. 11 in the doubles rankings in April 2022 and also made a US Open mixed doubles semifinal that year.
The Singles Rebuild
McNally’s singles career high is No. 54, reached in May 2023, and her best Grand Slam singles result remains the third round at the 2020 US Open. The rebuild since has run through the second tier: she won WTA 125 singles titles at Midland in 2022 and Newport in 2025, the level where players ranked outside the top 60 accumulate the points that get them into main draws rather than qualifying.
In 2025 she won the US Open Wild Card Challenge, the USTA competition that awards a main-draw place to the American man and woman who earn the most ranking points across a fixed summer window. She reached the second round in New York with it. The 2026 women’s Challenge closes on Aug. 9.
Playing Style
McNally is tall for a player who wins on touch rather than power. The doubles background shows in her singles: she comes forward more readily than most of her peers, uses the slice backhand to change the height and pace of a rally, and is comfortable finishing at the net in an era when few players below the top 20 are. She is not going to serve her way out of trouble, and long baseline exchanges against bigger hitters are where her matches are lost.
What the style does produce is a genuine capacity to disrupt. Opponents used to a predictable rhythm find her hard to settle against, which is why her win list contains names ranked well above her and why those wins tend to arrive in isolation rather than in runs.
Toronto 2026
Ranked No. 70 and unseeded at the National Bank Open, McNally beat the sixth seed Linda Noskova 7-6(5), 6-1 in the second round, coming back from 5-1 down in the opening set against a player making her first appearance since winning Wimbledon. It was the biggest win of her season by ranking.
She lost in the third round to Alexandra Eala, 6-3, 5-7, 6-4, in a match covered here, having also played the doubles alongside Gauff. Cincinnati, where she has a home-tournament claim that almost no other player in the field can make, follows on Aug. 13, and the American contingent there is the deepest in years.
Season Snapshot — as of Aug. 9, 2026
The figures in this section change during the season. Everything above holds regardless of date.
- WTA singles ranking: No. 70
- WTA doubles ranking: No. 38
- Career doubles titles: 9
- Career singles titles: none at tour level; two at WTA 125
- Career-high singles ranking: No. 54 (May 2023)
- Career-high doubles ranking: No. 11 (April 2022)
- Best Grand Slam results: doubles runner-up, 2021 and 2022 US Open; third round in singles, 2020 US Open
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Caty McNally from?
Madeira, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati. She is coached by her mother, Lynn McNally.
Has Caty McNally won a Grand Slam?
No. She has reached two major finals, both in women’s doubles at the US Open — in 2021 with Coco Gauff and in 2022 with Taylor Townsend — and lost both.
Do Coco Gauff and Caty McNally still play doubles together?
They have partnered on and off since 2019, including at the National Bank Open in 2026, but not as a full-time pairing. They won three tour titles together and reached the 2021 US Open final.
What is Caty McNally’s highest ranking?
No. 54 in singles, in May 2023, and No. 11 in doubles, in April 2022.
Did Caty McNally win the US Open Wild Card Challenge?
Yes, in 2025. She took the American women’s main-draw wild card and reached the second round at Flushing Meadows.
