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Coco Gauff subdues Aryna Sabalenka to win the U.S. Open for her first Grand Slam title
NEW YORK — Coco Gauff won her first major title on Saturday at the US Open with a 2-6, 6-3, 6-2 victory over Aryna Sabalenka in front of an adoring crowd under the roof on a stormy day at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
After the match, the 19-year-old American fell to the ground and lay on her back on the court before sobbing in celebration. After hugging Sabalenka, Gauff ran up the stairs to tearfully hug her parents and then the rest of her team.
Moments later, Gauff told the star-studded crowd, which included Kevin Durant, Diane Keaton, Nicole Kidman, Spike Lee, Mindy Kaling and 2006 champion Maria Sharapova, that she still hadn’t fully processed the victory.
“Oh my goodness, it means so much to me,” Gauff told ESPN’s Mary Joe Fernandez. “I feel like I’m a little bit in shock in this moment. That [2022] French Open loss was a heartbreak for me. But I realized God put you through tribulations and trials and that makes this moment even sweeter than I could have imagined.”
After the match, several high-profile celebrities, including former President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama and President Joe Biden, sent her congratulatory messages over social media.
Gauff is the youngest American to win the US Open since Serena Williams in 1999 and the first American player to win a major title since Sofia Kenin at the Australian Open in 2020. Gauff also became the first woman to win the title in New York after dropping the first set in three matches during her title run since Williams, also in 1999.
When speaking to the media after the match, Gauff said it was an honor to have her name listed on the same trophy as Williams and her sister Venus, who won the title a combined eight times.
“I mean, they’re the reason why I have this trophy today, to be honest,” Gauff said. “They have allowed me to believe in this dream. Growing up, there weren’t too many Black tennis players dominating the sport. It was literally, at that time when I was younger, it was just them that I can remember.
“Obviously more came because of their legacy, so it made the dream more believable. But all the things that they had to go through, they made it easier for someone like me to do this.”
Gauff, the tournament’s No. 6 seed, was broken in the first game of the match and struggled to find any rhythm in the nervy 40-minute opening set. Since the first set winner had won 27 of the previous 28 US Open women’s finals, history was not on her side. But she took control in the second set, breaking Sabalenka in the fourth game and recording an 81% win percentage on first serve. Her confidence grew with every point, and her “Come on!” screams and fist pumps became increasingly more animated.
In the deciding set, it was all Gauff. She jumped to a 4-0 lead and withheld Sabalenka’s last-ditch efforts and a medical timeout at 4-1. After two hours and six minutes, Gauff was the US Open champion.
“You played unbelievable,” Sabalenka said to Gauff during the on-court trophy ceremony. “Congrats to you and your team, you guys deserve this title. Many more to come, I’m pretty sure.”
Despite still being a teenager, Gauff has been one of the sport’s most recognizable stars since she burst onto the scene at Wimbledon in 2019 and reached the fourth round as a 15-year-old qualifier. Since then, she’s won five WTA titles and reached the final at the 2022 French Open.
With several high-profile sponsorship deals and a growing presence on social media, Gauff has remained under the spotlight and the expectations for her career have continued to increase. On Saturday, Gauff said the pressure has been overwhelming at times, and she felt she was expected to immediately win a major title after her run to the fourth round at Wimbledon in 2019.
“It’s been difficult,” she said. “I mean, it’s been a long journey to this point. I wasn’t a fully developed player, and I still think I have a lot of development to go. At that moment, I think people were putting a lot of pressure on me to win. I felt that at 15 I had to win a Slam at 15.
“I think that was, you know, not the mistake, because everything led to this moment so there were no mistakes, but that was a little bit of the pressure that I was feeling. Now I just realize that I just need to go out there and try my best.”
After losing in the first round at Wimbledon in July, Gauff brought in a new team, including coach Pere Riba and consultant Brad Gilbert. Since then, she’s won the titles in Washington D.C., and Cincinnati and is 18-1 during the current hard-court swing. She defeated two Grand Slam champions en route to the final, as well as 2023 French Open runner-up Karolina Muchova in the semifinals.
Gauff told the crowd she had been motivated by those who had doubted her.
“I want to say honestly thank you to the people who didn’t believe in me,” Gauff said. “A month ago, I won a 500 title and people said, I would stop at that. Two weeks ago, I won a 1000 title and people were saying that was the biggest it was going to get. So three weeks later, I’m here with this trophy right now.
“I’ve tried my best to carry this with grace and I’ve been doing my best. So honestly, to those who thought they were putting water on my fire, you were really adding gas to it. And now I’m really burning so bright right now.”
Gauff later told reporters she had been reading comments online from those who didn’t think she was going to win right up until the match.
In addition to earning $3 million for the victory — something she thanked Billie Jean King for fighting for as she received it — Gauff will improve to a career-high ranking of No. 3 on Monday. Sabalenka, the reigning Australian Open champion, will take over the No. 1 ranking for the first time despite the loss.
Gauff will also return to the top spot in the doubles ranking, alongside partner Jessica Pegula. The pair reached the quarterfinals at the US Open.
The crash site of the helicopter carrying Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi has been located, Iranian state news agency IRNA and semi-official news outlet ISNA reported on Monday.
The helicopter crashed in a remote part of the country on Sunday.
As president of Iran, Raisi is the second most powerful individual in the Islamic Republic’s political structure after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini. He became president in a historically uncompetitive election in 2021, and he has overseen a period of intensified repression of dissent in a nation convulsed by youth-led protests against religious clerical rule.
The crash comes at a fraught moment in the Middle East, with war raging in Gaza and weeks after Iran launched a drone-and-missile attack on Israel in response to a deadly strike on its diplomatic compound in Damascus.
As the sun rose Monday, Raisi and the others on board remained missing more than 12 hours after the likely crash, with Turkish drone footage suggesting the helicopter went down in the mountains. Rescuers rushed to the site.
The incident comes as Iran under Raisi and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei launched an unprecedented drone-and-missile attack on Israel last month and has enriched uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels.
Iran has also faced years of mass protests against its Shiite theocracy over an ailing economy and women’s rights — making the moment that much more sensitive for Tehran and the future of the country as the Israel-Hamas war inflames the wider Middle East.
Raisi was traveling in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province. State TV said what it called a “hard landing” happened near Jolfa, a city on the border with the nation of Azerbaijan, some 600 kilometers (375 miles) northwest of the Iranian capital, Tehran. Later, state TV put it farther east near the village of Uzi, but details remained contradictory.
Traveling with Raisi were Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, the governor of Iran’s East Azerbaijan province and other officials and bodyguards, the state-run IRNA news agency reported. One local government official used the word “crash,” but others referred to either a “hard landing” or an “incident.”
Neither IRNA nor state TV offered any information on Raisi’s condition in the hours afterward.
Early Monday morning, Turkish authorities released what they described as drone footage showing what appeared to be a fire in the wilderness that they “suspected to be wreckage of helicopter.” The coordinates listed in the footage put the fire some 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of the Azerbaijan-Iranian border on the side of a steep mountain.
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‘I’ll bring my plane… I plan on keeping it for another four years’ – Biden on second debate with Trump
President Biden and former President Trump agreed to hold a second debate Sept. 10 hosted by ABC News.
The two candidates had already accepted an invitation earlier Wednesday to attend a CNN debate on June 27, and both confirmed later in the day on social media that they plan to attend the ABC debate in September.
“I’ve also received and accepted an invitation to a debate hosted by ABC on Tuesday, September 10th,” Biden posted on the social platform X. “Trump says he’ll arrange his own transportation. I’ll bring my plane, too. I plan on keeping it for another four years.”
Biden, of course, is referring to the presidential jet, Air Force One.
“It is my great honor to accept the CNN Debate against Crooked Joe Biden, the WORST PRESIDENT in the History of the United States and a true Threat to Democracy, on June 27th,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Likewise, I accept the ABC News Debate against Crooked Joe on September 10th.”
It marked a whirlwind few hours that started with Biden’s campaign publicly proposing two deabtes in June and September and ended with both candidates agreeing to a date and host.
ABC News had planned to host a GOP primary debate in New Hampshire, but it was canceled after Trump and Nikki Haley said they would not attend. Martha Raddatz of ABC co-moderated one of the 2016 presidential debates; the network did not host a debate in 2020.
The candidates have chosen to go around the Commission on Presidential Debates, the organization that has arranged the showdowns dating back to 1988.
Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon suggested working with outlets that hosted GOP primary debates in 2016 and Democratic primary debates in 2020 to avoid any perceptions of bias.
ABUJA, NIGERIA — Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Women Affairs says it is investigating a plan by a lawmaker in central Niger state to marry off some 100 female orphans of unknown ages later this month.
Speaker of the Niger State Assembly Abdulmalik Sarkin-Daji announced the mass wedding last week but called off the ceremony following widespread outrage.
Minister of Women Affairs Uju Kennedy-Ohanenye, speaking to journalists in Abuja on Tuesday, condemned the plans.
Kennedy-Ohanenye said she had petitioned the police and filed a lawsuit to stop the marriages pending an investigation to ascertain the age of the orphans and whether they consented to the marriages.
“This is totally unacceptable by the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and by the government” of Nigeria, she said.
Last week, Sarkin-Daji announced his support for the mass wedding of the orphans, whose relatives were killed during attacks by armed bandits. He said it was part of his support to his constituents following an appeal for wedding funding by local traditional and religious leaders.
The mass wedding had been scheduled for May 24.
“That support I intend to give for the marriage of those orphans, I’m withdrawing it,” he said. “The parents can have the support [money], if they wish, let them go ahead and marry them off. As it is right now, I’m not threatened by the action of the minister.”
Despite national laws prohibiting it, forced or arranged marriage is a common phenomenon in Nigeria, especially among rural communities in the predominantly Muslim north, where religious and cultural norms such as polygamy favor the practice.
Poor families often use forced marriage to ease financial pressure, and the European Union Agency for Asylum says girls who refuse could face repercussions such as neglect, ostracism, physical assault and rape.
Raquel Kasham Daniel escaped being married off as a teenager when her father died and now runs a nonprofit helping children, especially less-privileged girls, get a formal education for free.
She said the ability of women to avoid forced marriage in Nigeria depends on their income and education.
“I was 16 when I lost my dad and I was almost married off, but then I ran away from home. And that gave me the opportunity to complete my education, and now I have a better life,” Daniel said.
“So, the reason why I prioritize education is to make sure that other girls have access to quality schooling so that it will help them make informed decisions about their lives. Education not only increases our awareness as girls about our rights but also enhances our prospects for higher income earning,” she said.
Thirty percent of girls in Nigeria are married before they turn 18, according to Girls Not Brides, a global network of more than 1,400 civil society groups working to end child marriage.
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