Elina Svitolina had dropped her last two matches to Coco Gauff and was the heavy underdog heading into her Day 10 quarterfinal meeting with the two-time major champion at the Australian Open.
She played like the favorite, and ran away with a stunning straight-sets victory, reaching her fourth Grand Slam semifinal with a 6-1, 6-2 victory over a shellshocked Gauff.
The victory sends Svitolina into a semifinal with world No.1 Aryna Sabalenka and also ensures a return to the Top-10 for the first time since her return from maternity leave in April of 2023. 31-year-old Svitolina, who has won all ten matches she has played in 2026, has not held a Top-10 ranking since October of 2021.
“Not bad, I would say,” an elated Svitolina told the crowd. “It’s always been my dream to come back to the Top-10 after maternity leave, it’s always been my goal. Unfortunately it didn’t happen last year, I stopped after September, and when we were training in the off-season I told my coach I want to come back to the Top-10 still.”
A contest that was billed as a potential chess match between two women who like to play physical rallies ended up being a clinic from Svitolina and a series from mishaps from Gauff. Svitolina’s quality, juxtaposed with Gauff’s patchy play, made for one-way traffic the whole way.
Gauff won just five of 21 points on serve in the opening set, smacked 14 unforced errors, including five double-faults, and had a trio of racquets sent off to the stringer midway through the set.
She won 1 of 10 second-serve points in the opening set.
Gauff opted for a lower tension, and she hoped that would loosen her up in the second set. Instead she played tight as a drum as Svitolina raced through the first three games of the second set to stretch her run of consecutive games won to eight.
Gauff’s first hold of the match came 46 minutes into the match, for 1-3 in the second set, and it looked as if she might be able to turn the screws. Earlier in the game she had asked her coaches if she was playing the wrong way, but suddenly she appeared to be gaining confidence in her strokes.
It wouldn’t last.
Svitolina rallied to hold from 15-30 for 4-1, and that micro moment was as close as Gauff would come to notching a break.
Svitolina continued to target Gauff’s forehand, as she had done all night, the rest of the way. The Ukrainian finished with 12 winners and 16 unforced errors, while Gauff managed just three winners and a whopping 26 unforced errors.
Svitolina has produced two Top-10 wins in her last two rounds, and has yet to drop a set through five.
“It means the world to me,” she said. “I try to push myself and try to give myself the motivation to continue. I’m really happy to go through to the semifinals.”
As Svitolina gave her post-match interview on court, lasting images of Gauff smashing a racquet in a tunnel beneath the stadium were being aired on ESPN. It was that kind of night for the two-time major champion.