Reigning US Open champion Coco Gauff was upset by Russia’s Diana Shnaider 6-4, 6-1 on Friday in a third-round match at the WTA Canadian Open.
Shnaider captured her first match against a top-10 rival in winning the meeting of 20-year-olds with world number two Gauff, the US top seed who was ousted in a bid for her eighth career WTA title.
The 24th-ranked Russian seeks her fourth WTA title of the year after Thailand, Bad Homburg and Budapest.
Shnaider, in her first WTA Masters level round of 16 match, needed only 70 minutes to dispatch Gauff and book a quarter-final against Russian sixth seed Liudmila Samsonova, who eliminated Belgium’s Elise Mertens 6-2, 6-4.
Shnaider broke Gauff in the 10th game to capture the opening set and the American double-faulted away a break to hand Shnaider a 3-1 lead in the second set and never recovered.
US third seed and defending champion Jessica Pegula defeated compatriot Ashlyn Krueger 6-2, 6-4 to reach a quarter-final against another American, Peyton Stearns, who advanced 6-4, 4-2 when 12th seed Victoria Azarenka retired.
Another all-US quarter-final will send eighth seed Emma Navarro against Taylor Townsend.
Navarro defeated Ukraine’s 11th seed Marta Kostyuk 7-5, 7-5 while Townsend upset Latvian fourth seed Jelena Ostapenko 6-2, 6-1.
Anna Kalinskaya, the 10th seed from Russia, awaits the winner of a late match between two-time reigning Australian Open champion Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus and Britain’s Katie Boulter.
js/des
