Former Olympic champion Belinda Bencic stunned third-seeded American Coco Gauff 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 on Wednesday to reach the quarterfinals of the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells.
The 28-year-old wild card, who gave birth to daughter Bella in April of last year, won 69% of her first-serve points in a match that lasted 2 hours, 20 minutes.
Bencic, from Switzerland, returned the favor from the Australian Open in January, when Gauff won after dropping the first set. The defeat came the day before Gauff’s 21st birthday as the 2023 US Open champion was broken at 4-4 in the final set after going up 40-0.
“Obviously, this is why you are practicing and working hard all your life, so it’s super nice to play in this kind of atmosphere,” Bencic said in her on-court interview. “The way you cheered before the match … I had chills and goosebumps and I kind of just put the serve into the court because I was so nervous.”
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Gauff started aggressively and committed five double faults in the first set, including three in one game but was broken only once en route to wrapping up the set in 51 minutes when Bencic sent a forehand wide.
But Bencic was firing on all cylinders in the second set and, despite twice requiring medical attention for foot and hand issues, built a 4-1 lead before securing it when Gauff returned a serve into the net.
Bencic took another medical timeout before the deciding set to have a hand blister tended to.
Gauff struggled with her serve throughout the tournament and had eight double faults against Bencic, with only four aces.
Bencic next faces another American, Australian Open champion Madison Keys, who rallied for a 4-6, 7-6 (7), 6-3 victory over 19th-seeded Donna Vekic.
The 30-year-old No. 3 seed extended her winning streak to 15 matches after trailing 5-3 and being two points from defeat in the second set.
“Sometimes after a close tiebreaker and winning the set and kind of having a little bit of … a surge of energy and everything, sometimes you can get almost a little bit too amped,” Keys said. “So I just wanted to try to play really tough the first game and just try to get the thing that I was doing well in order to close out that set.”
Keys did exactly that, taking the momentum from the tiebreak and breaking Vekic to open the third. She closed out the comeback win with one of her lethal forehands to wild cheers from the home fans.
Top-seeded Aryna Sabalenka cruised to a 6-1, 6-2 victory over Sonay Kartal, who was facing an opponent ranked in the top 10 for the first time. She will meet Liudmila Samsonova in the quarterfinals.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
