📰 Newspapers

Gauff battles through back injury to keep WTA Finals hopes alive

Gauff battles through back injury to keep WTA Finals hopes alive

Coco Gauff shows all of her battling qualities as she fights through a back injury to beat Marta Kostyuk and keep her WTA Finals last-four hopes alive.

Coco Gauff showed all of her battling qualities as she fought through a back injury to beat Marta Kostyuk and keep her WTA Finals last-four hopes alive.

American Gauff was visibly in pain as she received treatment on her lower back midway through a match she needed to win to stay in the tournament.

She found herself 5-1 down in the second set - only to win six games in a row to complete a 6-4 7-5 win at Indian Wells.

"Physically, I wasn't at my best, which I'm not really used to," Gauff told Sky Sports.

"It was like a mental challenge, learning how to play through that."

The long tennis season has taken a toll on a number of players, with Ukraine's Kostyuk also receiving treatment on a wrist injury that has been hampering her since August.

It is the second time that Gauff has overturned a 5-1 deficit at this tournament, having done the same to beat Jessica Pegula on Sunday.

However, the 22-year-old admitted she was not expecting it to happen again, and was already preparing herself for a third set.

"I asked my physio at 5-2 down, what can I do on the bathroom break [between sets] to try and loosen up," Gauff said.

In brief

Coco Gauff showed all of her battling qualities as she fought through a back injury to beat Marta Kostyuk and keep her WTA Finals last-four hopes alive. American Gauff was visibly in pain as she received treatment on her lower back midway through a match she needed to win to stay in the tournament. It is the second time that Gauff has overturned a 5-1 deficit at this tournament, having done the same to beat Jessica Pegula on Sunday.

This is the opening of the story, shared with credit to BBC News — Top Stories. The rest of the report — with every detail — continues on the publisher’s website.

Continue reading at BBC News — Top Stories ↗

Cookie settings

Choose which cookies we may use. You can change this at any time from Cookie settings in the footer. Details of each cookie are in the Cookie Policy.

Strictly necessary

Needed for sign-in, security, payments and remembering these choices. Always on.

Preferences

Remember settings such as dark mode.

Analytics & performance

Help us count visits, understand which pages, devices and countries our readers use, and measure how well the site performs – anonymous and aggregated.

Advertising & marketing

Lets advertising partners show and personalise adverts, measure impressions, clicks and visits, prevent ad fraud and pay us – this is how the free site is funded.

🔔 News notifications

Get headlines from NewsHub on this device — even when the site is closed.

You can switch this off at any time. Works on Android, Windows, Mac and Linux browsers; on iPhone/iPad add the site to your Home Screen first.