Coco Gauff had not won a tennis tournament since last October. It took her 74 minutes on Sunday night to end that, and she did it against the only American ranked above her. Gauff beat Jessica Pegula 6-2, 6-4 to take the Cincinnati Open, her first title of 2026 and the 12th of her career. It is her second here after 2023, and it makes her the third woman in the Open era to win this tournament more than once, joining Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka.
The occasion carried more history than the match did. This was the first all-American women’s final in Cincinnati since 1970, when Rosie Casals beat Nancy Richey, and the 56-year wait produced a night of almost entirely one-way traffic. Gauff broke twice to race to 5-0 in the opening set. Pegula got on the board, and Gauff broke again to close it out 6-2.
The second set followed the same shape. Gauff broke early to lead 5-2 and looked to be finishing in a hurry. Pegula, who has been the most consistent player on the WTA Tour this season, broke back to reach 5-4 and made her friend and former doubles partner earn it. Gauff broke straight back to end it, converting five of six break points across the match.
It was their 10th meeting and their second in a final, after Wuhan last October — which was, until Sunday, the last tournament Gauff had won. The head-to-head is now level at 5-5. Between those two nights sat a season that kept stopping one match short. Gauff reached finals in Miami and Rome and lost both. She led the tour in WTA 1000 match wins for much of the summer without converting any of it into a trophy.
She had a match point in the Wimbledon semifinal against Karolina Muchova and did not take it. Ten months is not a long drought by most measures. For a player who won each of her first nine hard-court finals, it was long enough to become a subject she was asked about at every stop. “I think it was a long journey, but I’m happy,” Gauff said afterward. “I think it’s night and day, the player I was last year to now.”
The week itself was close to clean. Gauff dropped one set, the first of her opening match against Liudmila Samsonova, and then won 12 in a row — past Ann Li, Marie Bouzkova, Marta Kostyuk and Sara Bejlek, the 20-year-old Czech who had taken out Aryna Sabalenka and Madison Keys before running into her. The title is Gauff’s fourth at WTA 1000 level, takes her season record to 40 wins and means she has won nine of her last 10 matches.
Pegula leaves with the runner-up finish she also collected here in 2024, when she lost the final to Sabalenka. Her week included ending Iga Swiatek’s title defense in three sets on Saturday, a win that was also the 300th main-draw victory of her career. The result leaves three Americans inside the women’s top 10 heading into New York.
The parallel Gauff will be asked about all week is 2023. She won Cincinnati that August and won the US Open a fortnight later, the first of her two majors. She was offered the comparison on Sunday and declined it, saying she did not regard the title as an indicator of anything in New York beyond the quality of the opponents she had beaten to get it.
There is reason for that caution. The women’s draw arrives at Flushing Meadows without an obvious favorite. Sabalenka went out in the fourth round here to Bejlek, her third straight early exit. Swiatek’s defense ended in the semifinals. Elena Rybakina retired from her quarterfinal with a left ankle problem and has not since made her status public.
The US Open main draw begins Sunday, Aug. 30. Cincinnati was the last event capable of moving the seeding board, which closed on Monday.
