Gauff, Keys and Anisimova: Three American stories intersecting at the WTA Finals

Three Americans navigated vastly different paths, but secured their invitations to the ultimate destination.

This week at the China Open, Coco Gauff, Madison Keys and Amanda Anisimova qualified for the PIF WTA Finals in Riyadh. They are three competitors at three stages of their careers, staging a red-white-and-blue revival, united by the thread of uncommon resilience.

• Gauff, keen to defend her Beijing title, will play in the year-end championship for the fourth time -- at the age of 21.
• Keys, who has regained her top form at 30, will play in her second WTA Finals, nine years after her first.
• Anisimova, still only 24, rediscovered belief after a career reset and will join the best and the brightest for the first time.

And so, the singles field in Riyadh is shaping up. We now have five of the eight competitors, after No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka and No. 2 Iga Swiatek.

We break down the freshly minted qualifiers:

Coco Gauff

She officially qualified by reaching the quarterfinals at this tournament in which she has enjoyed unprecedented success. Gauff is into the semifinals and has won 14 of her 15 matches at the China Open, something no other woman has done in the more than two decades of this event.

“That’s pretty cool,” Gauff told reporters afterward. “To see a checkmark by your name definitely gives you a sense of relief for sure.”

A berth in Riyadh is the ultimate payoff after an up-and-down year for Gauff. Back in the spring, seven years after winning the junior title at Roland Garros she was the champion of the senior division.

The grass season did not go as well. Gauff lost her only two matches, in Berlin and at Wimbledon, and when she transitioned to the North American hard-court season double faults became an issue. Gauff turned to mechanics expert Gavin MacMillan, who solved Aryna Sabalenka’s serving woes. After winning her first three matches at the US Open, Gauff fell in the fourth round to Naomi Osaka.

The China swing comes at just the right time.

A year ago, Gauff took the title in Beijing and, including Wuhan, wound up winning nine of 10 matches to enter the WTA Finals in peak form. After losing her opening match in Riyadh, Gauff defeated four Top 10 players, including No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka and No. 2 Iga Swiatek to win the year-end title.

The way she’s playing, it could be a scenario that repeats itself. Gauff has a chance to go back-to-back at the WTA Finals since Serena Williams more than a decade ago. She could become the only active player to collect multiple titles at the year-end championships.

Madison Keys

Currently No. 5 in the Race standings, Keys qualified when Gauff reached the semifinals. She becomes the fourth singles player lined up for Riyadh, due to her breakthrough win at the Australian Open. According to the qualification guidelines, if a major champion finishes the regular season in the Top 20 -- they’re in.

Keys withdrew from Beijing and Wuhan with an injury.

Back in January, on the cusp of her 30^th birthday, Keys won her first Grand Slam singles title in Melbourne. She became the oldest woman to defeat the World No. 1 (Sabalenka) and No. 2 (Swiatek) in the last two matches of a major in the half-century of rankings records.

After years of stressing over her lack of a Grand Slam title, Keys finally came to understand that, even in the context of professional tennis, she’d produced an extraordinary career. And that realization freed her to take the next step.

Nine years ago, at the age of 21, Keys found herself in the year-end Singapore field. The two players she lost to -- Simona Halep and Angelique Kerber -- have both retired. But Keys has persevered and contemplates a second year-end challenge.

At the BNP Paribas Open in March, Keys acknowledged that the win in Australia heightened her personal expectations but cautioned restraint.

“It’s really important for me and for my team to remember how we got there and what we were doing,” she said. “And I think kind of going back to that, and staying really grounded in that is going to be really important.

“I think the balance of being honest with my expectations rising, but also knowing that I don’t think anyone really thrives when you have such a dramatic mind shift so quickly after success.”

Amanda Anisimova

After a sizzling, career-best run this summer, Anisimova has been severely tested in Beijing.

She weathered a tiebreak in the third round against Zhang Shuai that required 24 points, then came back from down a set to defeat both Karolina Muchova and Jasmine Paolini. The Thursday win against the Italian sent her into the semifinals and locked down her spot in Riyadh.

It was a display of patience under pressure that Anisimova seems to have increasingly mastered this year.

After losing four straight opening matches in WTA 1000s, Anisimova stepped away from tennis in the spring of 2023. Surrounded by friends and family, she slowly replenished body and soul.

She was No. 442 in the PIF WTA Rankings heading into the 2024 Australian Open, but by the time she arrived in China at the end of the year, she was already inside the Top 50. That set her up for a phenomenal 2025.

Her first WTA 1000 title, a crisp, clean 6-0 sprint through the field in Doha, delivered Anisimova inside the Top 20 for the first time. She reached the fourth round at Roland Garros and the final at Queen’s in London.

Anisimova was a quarterfinalist in her previous appearance at Wimbledon and, after missing the tournament twice, she played her way into the finals, defeating Sabalenka in the semifinals. However, Swiatek dispatched her 6-0, 6-0 in the final.

The US Open offered a chance for revenge and Anisimova took it with gusto, throwing down a 6-4, 6-3 win over Swiatek in the quarterfinals and following up with semifinal success over Naomi Osaka. She pushed Sabalenka to a second-set tiebreak before falling in the final.

 “Today I really came out there with, like, not an ounce of fear,” Anisimova said after beating Swiatek. “I feel like I really made a point to myself and also maybe to other people that, like, if you really put a positive mindset out there or just try and work through things, then you can have a positive outcome.”