A second Cincinnati, three years on: Gauff beats Pegula to level their head-to-head

Two. Coco Gauff has now won Cincinnati twice, three years apart, beating Jessica Pegula 6-2, 6-4 on Sunday for her second title at the event and to level their career head-to-head at 5-5.

The scoreline undersells how lopsided the numbers were. Gauff won 62 of the 110 points played, 56 percent, and backed it up across categories: 61 percent of service points against Pegula's 48, and 52 percent of return points to Pegula's 39. Pegula served better by one measure, landing 64 percent of first serves to Gauff's 55, but it barely mattered: Gauff won 67 percent of the points on her own first serve and 54 percent of the points on Pegula's first serve too.

The match turned on service games, not sets. Gauff broke immediately for 2-0 and again for 4-0 in the first set; Pegula broke back to get to 5-2, but Gauff closed it out 6-2 with another break in the eighth game. The second set followed the same shape: Gauff broke for 2-0, Pegula broke back at 5-4 to stay alive, and Gauff broke once more in the next game to finish it, converting her only match point of the evening. There was no tiebreak in either set. Pegula, who faced six break points and saved just one, never had a match point of her own to save.

Gauff first won Cincinnati in 2023; Sunday's final gave her a second title at the event, three years after the first, alongside the Roland Garros trophy she added in 2025. It also evened a head-to-head that had tilted against her: Pegula led their series 5-4 coming into the final, with a win over Gauff at the Riyadh Finals last November among the recent meetings, but Sunday's result levels it at 5-5, Gauff's win over Pegula at Wimbledon in June also part of that run. Reaching the final took some resolve of its own: Gauff opened by recovering from a set down against Liudmila Samsonova, then needed a 7-3 tiebreak to get past the 28th-seeded Ann Li before beating the 22nd-seeded Marie Bouzkova in straight sets. Level at 5-5, the next meeting between Gauff and Pegula will settle which way the head-to-head is heading.

Match tale, 23 August 2026, sources: Cincinnati Open, api-tennis