One point from elimination, she took the last three games — and sent Gauff home.
Jessica Pegula double-faulted, and the match point belonged to Linda Noskova.
That was the position at Indian Wells on Thursday night: Noskova ahead 5-4 in the third set with Pegula serving to stay alive, Pegula one point from going home from the WTA Finals, and Coco Gauff — who had beaten Marta Kostyuk earlier in the day and then had nothing left to do but watch — one point from taking Pegula's place in the semifinals.
Pegula held. Then she broke. Then she served it out, and the last three games of the night rearranged the whole group: Pegula beat Noskova 7-6 (2), 4-6, 7-5 in two hours and 45 minutes, took the second semifinal spot out of Group 1, and eliminated Gauff in the process.
"I just kept telling myself, 'This could be your last match for the year, so go out and compete, and you can hold your head high for the rest of the year,'" Pegula told reporters afterward. "But I definitely wanted another chance to still be here."
The first match-point save at this event in seven years
The WTA's own record book puts a frame around what Pegula did. She is the first player to win a WTA Finals match after saving a match point since Simona Halep did it in 2019. Finals matches are not supposed to bend that far. The field is eight players, everyone in it has spent a year proving they close, and a match point at this tournament usually stays converted.
Noskova had chances to make it stay that way. The second set had already locked up first place in the group for her, and she played the decider like a player with nothing to protect — she raced to 2-0, kept Pegula's second serve under pressure, and worked her way to the edge of a straight passage at 5-4. Tennis Now counted a career-worst 15 double faults for the Czech on the night, and the errors never quite stopped her from dictating. What stopped her was one hold. Pegula's serve deserted her at the worst possible moment — the double fault handed over the match point — and then came back for the two points that saved the hold, and the season.
Gauff did her part, and it was not enough
The cruelty of the round-robin format sat on the other side of the draw sheet. Gauff opened the day in real trouble: she had lost to Noskova in straight sets on Tuesday, and her meeting with Kostyuk turned into a fight she nearly lost twice, falling behind 5-1 in the second set after a medical timeout for her back before winning the last six games to close it out 6-4, 7-5.
That win did everything Gauff could ask of it except the one thing that mattered — it transferred her fate to a match she was not playing. All three women finished Group 1 at 2-1. The sets column separated them: Noskova 5-2, Pegula 5-3, Gauff 4-3. Gauff, a former champion at this event, went out having won her last match of the tournament.
Noskova's week, meanwhile, keeps its shape regardless of Thursday's ending. The Wimbledon champion arrived at her first WTA Finals and became the first player into the semifinals, beating Gauff without dropping a set along the way. She still won the group. She will play the winner of Friday's match between Aryna Sabalenka and Elina Svitolina in Saturday's semifinals.
A career-high in aces, and a first meeting waiting on Saturday
Buried under the ending was the best serving day of Pegula's career. She hit 16 aces, a personal best — her previous high was 14, set against the same opponent, Noskova, in Berlin earlier this season. Her first-serve percentage swung wildly by set, 61% in the first and 50% in the second, and she said so herself: the dip in the second set is what let Noskova back into the match and turned a routine group closer into a survival test.
This is Pegula's third trip to the WTA Finals semifinals, after 2023 and 2025, and the first time she has reached them after losing her opening match of the week — that loss came against Gauff, which is its own small symmetry: the player who beat her on Sunday watched her take the last spot on Thursday.
Saturday gives her somebody she has never faced. Pegula plays Mirra Andreeva, the Group 2 winner, in the first meeting between the two — a semifinal pairing the WTA notes carries the fourth-largest age gap between semifinalists in the event's history. "It's not every day you play someone that you've never played before," Pegula said. "We've been playing a lot of matches, so it's kind of funny we've just never run into each other."
One point decided whether she would be there for it. She treated that point like it was hers, and it was.
