Coco Gauff again treated Asia like a practice session—and again left with a big title, in Wuhan

“That’s just how tennis works,” Coco Gauff told a fellow player in the locker room in Wuhan this week. “It always happens when you don’t expect it to.”

“It,” in this case, can roughly be translated as “finding your A game, and going deep at a big tournament.”

At this point, Gauff may start expecting those two things to happen every time she goes to Asia in the fall.

🖥️📲 The Match in 15 Minutes: Gauff vs. Pegula, Wuhan

For the second straight year, Coco left the summer hard-court season in the States with her confidence shaken, and her serve and forehand even shakier. Her coach, Jean-Christophe Faurel, suggested that she not make the trip to China, and take the time to shore up her game on the practice court instead. Good for her, and him, that she didn’t listen. For the second straight year, Gauff did an immediate 180 in Asia, and will fly back home with a significant trophy by her side. In 2024, she won Beijing and made the semis in Wuhan. In 2025, she made the semis in Beijing and won Wuhan.

Both times, Gauff says, she succeeded because she felt less pressure, both from herself and her countrymen back home.

“I think the U.S. swing is very stressful for all the American players,” Gauff said this week. “I think just coming here on the other side of the world where there’s maybe less attention on us makes me feel a little bit freer playing here.”

More important, Gauff has also found a way to lower her own expectations as the WTA calendar winds down. Last year, and again this year, she says she treated Beijing and Wuhan like “preseason” events. The point was not so much to win them, as it was to work on her weaknesses, and see what she could improve for 2026.

“It just feels different at the end of the year,” Gauff said when she got to Beijing three weeks ago. “I feel definitely a lot lighter. It feels, again, like a practice tournament. So we’ll see how it goes.”

Once again, lighter was better for Gauff, especially in Wuhan. She didn’t drop a set in five matches, and she won two bagel sets early on. In the semis and final, she knocked off a pair of Top 10 opponents in Jasmine Paolini and Jessica Pegula. Coming into the final, she had broken serve 22 times, or more than four times per match.

It just feels different at the end of the year. I feel definitely a lot lighter. It feels, again, like a practice tournament. So we’ll see how it goes. Coco Gauff

Which brings us to the next question: Can Gauff replicate this level of play earlier in the year and at the Slams, when she’s no longer in pre-season, practice mode, and no longer feeling so light?

Watching her beat Pegula in a tight, topsy-turvy two-setter in the final, a cliché came to mind. It’s one that she can probably find useful: Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Gauff was not perfect in Asia, and you can’t say everything is fixed. In Beijing, she was unceremoniously dismissed, and her forehand was again exposed, by Amanda Anisimova in the semis, 6-1, 6-2. In Wuhan, she double faulted five straight times at one stage against Paolini, and won 27 percent of points on her second serve in that match.

Up 4-1 in the first set in the final, Gauff’s forehand went wobbly once more, and she let Pegula get back to 4-4. When Coco hit a forehand long and then double faulted to make it 30-30, the wheels seemed like they might be about to come off.

At other times of the year, you see Gauff show signs of frustration, at herself and her coaches, in these situations. This time, she stepped straight to the line, slid an ace out wide, and cracked a crosscourt backhand winner to hold. As the match’s lead TV commentator said, Coco “managed her double faults” well over the past two weeks. She accepted her misfires, without letting them get into her head.

Whatever happened, Gauff plowed ahead. She was more aggressive than Pegula, leading the winner count 24 to 13, and she was better when it mattered most. Down 4-5 in the second. Gauff reeled off 10 straight points, and closed with a winning forehand pass.

Before Asia, a long struggle appeared to be ahead for Gauff, as she tried to right her wayward serve. After Asia, she was all smiles again, and a title defense at the year-end championships in Riyadh no longer feels far-fetched.

Maybe in 2026, she should tell herself that the whole year is just one long practice session for 2027. She might win the Grand Slam.

“I have no idea what’s happening right now,” Valentin Vacherot said after the Rolex Shanghai Masters on Sunday.

Welcome to the club, Valentin. His victory, and the final he played, were gobsmacking all around.

Before this event, the 26-year-old Vacherot had won one ATP-level match. Not one tournament; one match. He was ranked 204th. Starting two weeks ago, he won eight matches—three of them in qualifying—to reach the final. In five of them, he lost the first set. Yet by the semifinals he had built up enough momentum to send Novak Djokovic packing in straight sets.

All of which led Vacherot home, quite literally. His final-round opponent was this first cousin, and one-time teammate at Texas A&M, Arthur Rinderknech.

“There has to be one loser but I think there is two winners today, one family that won,” said Vacherot, who is four years younger than his cousin.

🖥️📲 The Match in 15 Minutes: Vacherot vs. Rinderknech, Shanghai

By Sunday, even family sentiment couldn’t stop Vacherot. Again he lost the first set, but again it didn’t bother him. Rinderknech only had to make one slip-up for Vacherot to barrel through the door and take the match in hand.

It came at 3-3 in the second set. Rinderknech tried a drop shot that landed wide and left him down break point. In the commentary booth, Barry Cowan presciently described it as a “massive own goal.” He must have watched Vacherot enough over the past week to know what was coming. The man from Monaco didn’t waste any time drilling a backhand down the line to break. He never trailed again.

“When I’m down, I have no choice and need to bring my A-game,” Vacherot said of the mindset he had developed in Shanghai. “In the first set I didn’t do that and he was playing better than me. I took my first chance to break in the second set and from that the crowd got more involved and we put on more of a show in the second part of the match.”

There has to be one loser but I think there is two winners today, one family that won. Valentin Vacherot

Vacherot’s victory made him the lowest-ranked player to win a Masters 1000, and the first player from Monaco to win a title of any sort. (Thanks to Valentin, we all now know that a person from the Principality is known as a Monegasque.) This unlikely, one-family final was also a nice, late-year reminder that the world of tennis consists of so much more than the star players we see week in, week out.

“Grandpa and Grandma would be proud,” Vacherot wrote on the ATP’s camera lens afterward, as both players’ teams, and both players, teared up.

Vacherot’s run should show his tour-mates that there really isn’t much separating them from the world’s best, if they can find a way to believe in themselves. His play also offered a road map for anyone at any level. He was aggressive without taking big risks. Few of his shots were aimed close to the lines, yet he kept himself on the front foot in the rallies. In the final set against Rinderknech, with the title on the line, he hit 17 winners and made two errors.

After losing to Vacherot, Djokovic called his play “unbelievable” as he shook his hand. That’s a pretty fair description of the tournament all around, and was echoed by Vacherot after the final, when he said everything felt “unreal.” But the smart, sturdy, grinding, nine-match swath he cut through Shanghai let us all know again that reality is only, and exactly, what you make it.