Coco Gauff and Belinda Bencic both survived tense third-round matches at Wimbledon on Saturday, setting up a fourth-round clash. Gauff battled Claire Liu through a final-set surge, while Bencic edged past Anna Kalinskaya in a deciding tiebreak—then looked ahea
Coco Gauff was already staring at the kind of trouble that swallows momentum. Against fellow American Claire Liu, she arrived in the deciding set after holding firm through the second, and even had three match points at 6-3, 5-4. Then Liu flipped the script—rallying to force a final set.
In the fourth game of that last set, Gauff broke serve, steadied her footing, and turned the match with a clinical close: 6-3, 6-7(5), 6-2 to reach the Wimbledon fourth round for the fourth time.
For Gauff, it was another reminder that the grass courts of the All England Club don’t reward relief. She had already been forced to dig deep earlier, escaping Solana Sierra in the second round after Sierra served for the match in the third set and led 7-4 in the deciding 10-point tiebreak.
Now, the same month of pressure—different opponent—stands between her and the quarterfinals.
Belinda Bencic faced her own kind of grind. Last year’s semifinalist pushed past Anna Kalinskaya 6-4, 4-6, 7-6[6] after both players traded pressure in the third set. Bencic had led twice in that deciding stretch by a break. only to see Kalinskaya come back and leave everything to a third-set tiebreak. Bencic won it to secure her place in the Round of 16 for a fifth time.
The fourth-round meeting will bring their rivalry back to the surface where it will be most tested: grass. Gauff has beaten Bencic in five of their previous seven meetings, but none of those have taken place on grass. Five of their head-to-head matches to date have gone three sets. and Gauff is now chasing her first-ever berth in the Wimbledon quarterfinals.
A few numbers explain why both matches carried weight—not just as “wins,” but as statements of how they’re handling the week.
In the third round, and heading toward the Round of 16 clash, Gauff is now 5-0 against fellow Americans on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz this year, while Bencic is 5-1 against Kalinskaya all-time.
Bencic also continues to stack up momentum at Wimbledon: she has 22 main-draw wins at the tournament, the joint-most in her career at a single event. She also has 22 career US Open main-draw wins.
Gauff’s track record in tight matches points to why she keeps surviving late moments. She is 23-7 in three-set matches at Grand Slams in her career, the third best winning percentage in the Open Era.
And in the kind of tennis detail that often decides a match, Bencic’s power looked sharper in her win: she struck 42 winners against Kalinskaya, while Gauff hit 18 against Liu.
After her breakthrough into the fourth round, Gauff didn’t dress the moment up. She said getting past the fourth-round hurdle and into the Wimbledon quarterfinals would be a “big accomplishment. ” and she believes the reason she can keep doing it is that she’s been forced to dig deep twice in the first three rounds.
“I think I’m not playing my best tennis — I think today. I didn’t serve as well as I did in my last match but I held when I needed to. ” she said. “I definitely feel more confident after the last few matches. Both of the opponents I played are high-level players and very good grass-court players. Belinda will be the same. She’s good on this surface as well, so it will definitely be a tough one.”.
By Saturday night, the picture was clear: a rivalry that’s mostly been decided elsewhere is now arriving on grass, with both players carrying the proof of survival—one break that held, one tiebreak that decided, and a quarterfinal spot now within reach if they can do it again.
Wimbledon Coco Gauff Belinda Bencic Claire Liu Anna Kalinskaya Solana Sierra fourth round Wimbledon quarterfinals WTA grass court