She competed earlier in the tournament with tape near her right elbow and showed up for this match with a full black sleeve on that arm. Muchova asked to be visited by a physiotherapist during the extended break, although it was not immediately clear why. Then she got some tennis balls and stepped back on court to hit a few practice serves. At first, Gauff sat on her sideline chair, using a plastic fork to eat some fruit from a container. Just a few minutes later, though, came the delay. But Gauff broke to take that opening set. Gauff went up 5-1 before Muchova raised her level and pulled within 5-4. "Just kind of sad about the performance," said Muchova, who reached the final at Roland Garros in June. By match's end, Muchova had gone just 10-for-24 at the net. Muchova lost the point on her first three forays forward - and Gauff curled a perfect lob winner once in each of the opening two games. 10 seed Muchova, a 27-year-old from the Czech Republic, get comfortable at the net, where her varied style often pays dividends. One real key in that stretch: Gauff did not let No. Gauff was terrific in the early stages: She took 12 of the first 16 points for a 3-0 lead after merely 10 minutes. ET, it was cloudy and considerably cooler than it has been this week at Flushing Meadows, dropping from nearly 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 Celsius) on Wednesday to the low 80s. When Gauff and Muchova got started at 7:15 p.m. "I haven't thought that far ahead, to be honest." 1 in the rankings for the first time next week, and Keys, the runner-up at the 2017 US Open, were scheduled to meet in the second semifinal Thursday night. Sabalenka, who won the Australian Open in January and is guaranteed to move up to No. She was the runner-up at the 2022 French Open and will try to claim her first Grand Slam title. The streak includes the two biggest titles of Gauff's career - and now she needs one more win to get an even more important championship. Finally, Gauff completed her 11th win a row and the 17th in her past 18 matches, a run that began after a first-round exit at Wimbledon in July. In that game alone, Gauff kept getting so near to the finish line. With Gauff leading 6-5 and Muchova serving, the one-point-away count kept climbing. They would play on for nearly a half-hour. After failing to convert one match point while serving for the win at 5-3, then another four in what. The toughest part for Gauff might have been closing out the victory: She needed six match points to get it done, raucously supported by a partisan crowd that chair umpire Alison Hughes repeatedly implored to quiet down. Gauff, a 19-year-old from Florida, reached her first final at Flushing Meadows by defeating Muchova 6-4, 7-5 on what was anything but an ordinary evening. Now she is one win away from becoming a Grand Slam champion. It has been rather obvious for quite some time that Gauff is no ordinary teenager. And not, most distracting of all, when her US Open semifinal against Karolina Muchova was interrupted for 49 minutes Thursday night by environmental activists - one of whom glued his bare feet to the concrete floor in the stands. Not when match point after match point went by the wayside. Not when a big lead in the first set evaporated. Coco Gauff powers past Karolina Muchova to reach 1st US Open final
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