Coco Gauff won her eighth successive match of 2025 and made it 16 sets out of 16, scoring her second victory of the year against Canada’s Leylah Fernandez to move into the fourth round at Australian Open 2025 on Friday.
MORE: All the scores from Day 6 at AO 2025
During their United Cup meeting in Perth, Gauff dropped just five games against the left-hander, and this time just one more as she completed a 6-4 6-2 success under the Margaret Court Arena lights.
The scoreline suggests it was plain sailing for the 20-year-old former US Open champion, but early on her play was a touch inconsistent and improvements will need to be made if she is to land another Grand Slam title next week.
Gauff’s next test on Sunday will come against Switzerland’s Belinda Bencic, who went through after Naomi Osaka retired with an abdominal injury a set into their third-round match earlier in the day.
MORE: AO 2025 women's singles draw
Afterwards, Gauff was asked whether it’s easier or harder to come back to play an opponent twice in such a short space of time.
“I think harder because she knows what to expect,” the third seed explained. “I definitely think she played a little bit different today than she did at United Cup.
“Definitely harder, because you’re kind of trying to change up what you did last time because she’s kind of expecting it.
“I knew today was going to be a tough match regardless of the result a couple of weeks ago.”
While the early exchanges were tight, Fernandez in truth missed too many first serves and committed too many errors to be able to stay with the world No.3 for long enough periods.
The Canadian, who reached the 2021 US Open final, was fortunate to stay with her higher-ranked opponent for as long as she did during the opening half hour.
She held from 0-40 in the third game as Gauff struggled to find her range on return, and dodged another break point at 3-3 when the American missed yet another routine forehand off another second serve at 30-40.
Eventually though the American’s pressure paid off, and she was handed another chance to break later in the same game. Fernandez cracked, missed a backhand and Gauff was up 4-3.
A clean service game to love for Gauff finally gave her a bit of breathing space at 5-3, and although she missed a set point on Fernandez’s serve, she eventually put to bed a patchy first set 6-4 after 44 minutes.
Gauff’s quality started to show as the match wore on, and she struck quickly in the second set, breaking twice to build a 3-0 lead.
In the very next game though, just when it seemed like she would start to pull away, Gauff then threw in back-to-back double faults from 15-30 to hand Fernandez a first break of the match and a lifeline back into the set.
The stress didn’t last too long for Gauff however, as she took the Fernandez serve for a third successive time to re-establish a three-game cushion and a 4-1 lead.
That effectively ended the match as a contest – although Gauff again threw in back-to-back double faults on her way to holding for 5-1 – and the American was quick to finish the contest off for a spot in the last 16.