Taylor Fritz was supposed to be the sure thing for Team USA at the United Cup. Instead, he got upset in straight sets by a clay-court specialist who’s barely won any hard-court matches lately.
That left Coco Gauff to save the day. And boy, did she deliver.
The defending champions came into this year’s tournament with high expectations. Fritz has won the United Cup twice already – once in 2023 when it started, and again last year with Gauff as his partner. They’re both American No. 1s in their respective tours, so on paper, this looked like a pretty strong team.
| Name | Age | Points | Stats 2024 |
|---|
But sometimes tennis doesn’t care about what’s on paper.
Fritz’s Shocking Loss Changes Everything
Fritz was a massive favorite against Argentina’s Sebastian Baez in their opening match. Makes sense when you look at the numbers – Baez has only won eight hard-court matches in the past two seasons combined. The guy’s a clay specialist playing on his worst surface.
Somehow, Baez pulled off the upset of the tournament so far.
He beat Fritz 6-4, 5-7, 4-6 in what became the first major shock of the 2026 season. Fritz looked rusty out there, but it wasn’t just early-season cobwebs causing problems.
The American’s been dealing with knee issues since the off-season, and it really showed on court.
"It’s not the way I want to start off the year," Fritz said after the match. "There’s definitely a lot of rust showing. I feel like he raised his level, especially in the third set, but also at times in the second set."
Fritz admitted the first set wasn’t great tennis from either player. He won it mainly because Baez made more mistakes than he did.
"Ultimately in the end in the first set I won it because I put balls in the court, and he made mistakes."
But Baez figured things out as the match went on. He started playing smarter, cutting down on errors while still being aggressive when he got the chance.
"He started mentally cutting down on the mistakes, being very steady, but also dictating and being able to attack," Fritz explained.
Meanwhile, Fritz couldn’t find his rhythm. The ball was flying on him, and he couldn’t control points the way he wanted to.
"For me, the ball just felt like it was really flying on me. I didn’t feel like I had the control I wanted when I was trying to be offensive. I couldn’t really do the things I wanted out there."
The serving struggles made everything worse. Fritz had a couple of really bad service games that basically cost him the match.
"Then I just had a couple of games where I served very poorly. He played solid. I was struggling to beat him from the back. He was beating me from the back a lot. The bad serving games really cost me."
Coco Gauff saves the day for Team USA after Taylor Fritz’s loss
With Fritz’s unexpected loss putting Team USA in a tough spot, all eyes turned to Gauff. The 21-year-old world No. 3 had to step up big time.
She absolutely delivered.
Gauff faced Solana Sierra, who’s ranked 66th in the world. Sierra had actually looked pretty good in her first match, beating Jessica Bouzas Maneiro convincingly. But going up against a two-time Grand Slam champion? That’s a completely different level.
Gauff made it look easy. She dominated from the first point and never let Sierra think she had a chance.
The final score: 6-1, 6-1 in just 58 minutes.
That performance tied things up at 1-1, which meant everything would come down to mixed doubles. With Fritz still dealing with his knee problems, Gauff teamed up with doubles specialist Christian Harrison.
They faced Argentina’s Maria Lourdes Carle and Guido Andreozzi. Once again, Gauff came through when it mattered most.
The American duo won 6-4, 6-1 in an hour and three minutes, securing the tie for Team USA.
Gauff’s back-to-back wins basically saved the defending champions from what could’ve been a really embarrassing early exit. She’s already being mentioned as one of the favorites to finish 2026 as world No. 1, and performances like this show why.
Team USA now sits in a pretty good position to make the quarter-finals. They just need to beat Spain in their next match, and Spain’s already struggling after losing 0-3 to Argentina.
But Fritz’s injury concerns could be a real problem moving forward. The team’s title defense might depend on whether he can get healthy quickly – or if Gauff can keep carrying the load like she did against Argentina.
