Salmon successes and bad banana bread: Coco Gauff dishes on her skills in the kitchen

If you're ever invited to dinner at Coco Gauff's house, ask the 2023 US Open champion to make you some salmon.

After defeating Jessica Pegula in her opening match at the WTA Finals on Sunday, just her second win in six career meetings against her compatriot and one-time doubles partner, Gauff opened up on some of her recent successes and failures ... in the kitchen, that is.

Last month, Gauff revealed in a post to social media that she moved out of her parents' home "a few months ago" by posting a snapshot of her new living room along with the caption that she's now a "homeowner at 20." And when she arrived in Riyadh to compete in the year-end championships for a third time, she spoke openly with reporter Reem Abulleil about the learning curve she, like many young adults living on their own for the first time, is now experiencing.

“Obviously, I’m living alone, so I’m just trying to learn how to cook more, something I never really had to do living with both parents who like to cook," she said. "So it’s been something that I’ve been experimenting with, and had some mostly successes, some failures.”

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Successes, Gauff says, were cooking a salmon teriyaki bowl for her boyfriend when he came to visit her, and a pasta dish with chicken as an added protein. But not everything has gone well, she said. Case in point? One of Gauff's favorite things to bake: banana bread.

"The bananas were like, too ripe, because you're supposed to wait. I think I waited too long, so I threw them away. I tried to, like, freestyle it, without it," she said. And that came out awful.

"I tried to make it for my fitness coach for his birthday, but then when I tested it, I was, 'I can not give him this.' ... I was really disappointed in that, because banana bread is what I'm good at. I just thought that I would be good enough to maybe, you know, skip a couple ingredients."

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The experience taught Gauff a valuable lesson: Cooking is an art, but baking is a science.

"I think baking is, you have to be more precise than cooking, so I won't freestyle next time," she said.

Sitting with Iga Swiatek atop the Orange Group with matches against the Pole and Barbora Krejcikova still to come, Gauff is no doubt hoping there are no banana skins in her path to the WTA Finals semifinals for a second time.