Kostyuk upsets Gauff in Doha; first major shakeup of the WTA 1000 season

Kostyuk stunned the No. 3-seeded Coco Gauff with a forceful 6-2, 7-5 victory at the Qatar TotalEnergies Open on Tuesday in Doha.

The 22-year-old from Ukraine will play a third-round match against Magda Linette.

Serving to reach a second-set tiebreak, Gauff committed back-to-back double faults, her sixth and seventh of the match, to give Kostyuk two match points. She converted the second when Gauff’s backhand found the net.

Kostyuk had lost all three previous matches to Gauff on hard courts; Gauff was the highest-ranked player she’s ever beaten on this surface.

“Coco is an incredible fighter,” Kostyuk said in her on-court interview. “We always have incredible matches. I tried to stick to what I had to do. I’m very happy it worked out in two sets.”

Gauff finished with 39 unforced errors and only eight winners, marking her third straight loss in Doha. She fell in her opener last year to Katerina Siniakova and exited in the quarterfinals in 2022 and 2023.

Still, heading into her second-round match against Kostyuk, the 20-year-old American had won 17 straight against opponents ranked outside the Top 20.

Kostyuk, currently No. 21 in the PIF WTA Rankings, isn’t a classic Top 20 outsider. She began her career by losing 14 straight matches against Top 10 players — she’s 9-6 since.

She has steadily risen through the ranks. She saw her ranking soar as high as No. 16 last year and finished at No. 18. Kostyuk, a two-time finalist last year, has created all kinds of expectations and this win certainly will whet appetites for even more.