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Three ranking points and $230,000
Start time and TV
Coco Gauff against Marta Kostyuk opens the singles schedule on Thursday at 3:00 p.m. ET, which is noon in Indian Wells and 8:00 p.m. in London. Jessica Pegula and Linda Noskova play straight afterwards in the match that settles the second semifinal place in Group 1.
Tennis Channel holds the rights to the WTA Finals in the United States, so the match is available live on the network and on its app for subscribers and cable customers who sign in.
Right here on VAVEL we will bring you every game, break of serve and set, the serving numbers, and a full explanation of the Group 1 table once the last point is played.
Why the Finals are in Indian Wells
The WTA Finals were not supposed to be in California this year. The tour pulled out of its deal with Riyadh a year early because of regional security concerns, and Indian Wells Tennis Garden, home of the BNP Paribas Open every March, agreed to host the 2026 edition. Charlotte, North Carolina, takes over from 2027 for three seasons.
Indian Wells is the 15th host city since the event began in 1972 and the sixth in the last seven editions. It is also the first outdoor edition since Cancun in 2023.
Gauff won her title indoors in Riyadh in 2024. Total prize money this week is $10 million, with up to $3.37 million for a champion who goes unbeaten.
What is at stake this afternoon
Gauff has to beat Kostyuk and then needs Noskova to beat Pegula in the second match. If both of those things happen, Gauff finishes 2-1, one win clear of Pegula, and takes second place in Group 1 behind Noskova. If Pegula beats Noskova, Pegula goes through regardless of this result, because a three-way tie at 2-1 is decided on the percentage of sets won and Gauff cannot reach her figure.
A Kostyuk win also sends Pegula into the semifinals before she has played.
Kostyuk is already eliminated, but she still has something to play for. ESPN reported that a round-robin win is worth an extra $230,000, and a victory spares her an 0-3 week. She has beaten Gauff twice before, in Stuttgart in 2024 and in Doha in 2025.
Gauff leads the series 4-2
These two have met six times on the main tour and Gauff has won four, according to the head-to-head record. The most recent meeting came in August in the quarterfinals in Cincinnati, where Gauff won 6-2, 6-2 on her way to the title.
The series has not always been that one-sided. Their quarterfinal at the 2024 Australian Open went three sets, with Gauff edging it 7-6 (6), 6-7 (3), 6-2. A few months later Kostyuk beat her on clay in the Stuttgart quarterfinals in a final-set tiebreak, and the Ukrainian also won their meeting in Doha in 2025.
The pattern is clear enough. When Gauff serves well and drags rallies long, she controls the match. When Kostyuk gets cheap points on return and keeps her own error count down, she has shown she can beat the American.
Two losses, but not without a fight
Kostyuk is ranked No. 10 and enters as the ninth seed. Her best result of 2026 came at Wimbledon, where she reached her first semifinal before losing to Noskova, the eventual champion. She also beat Pegula twice during the season, which made Tuesday's meeting look more open than the seeding suggested.
It did not go her way. Pegula won 6-2, 7-5, and the double faults hurt Kostyuk badly: 9 of them, against 5 aces. She led 4-3 and then 5-4 in the second set, only for Pegula to take the last three games. Pegula converted 5 of her 11 break points and won 73 points to Kostyuk's 57.
Her opener had been even tougher. Noskova, the player who ended her Wimbledon run, beat her 6-2, 6-4 on Sunday, and Kostyuk won only six games.
Kostyuk, the late replacement
Marta Kostyuk was not supposed to be in this group. The Ukrainian came in as the alternate when world No. 1 Elena Rybakina, last year's champion and the 2026 Australian Open and US Open winner, withdrew on the eve of the event with a viral illness.
Kostyuk had missed out on a direct place in October. Needing to reach the final in Ningbo to stop Karolina Muchova from taking the last spot, she retired from her second-round match after losing the first set 6-4 to Ekaterina Alexandrova. Her wrist, which had already kept her out of the Billie Jean King Cup Finals in September, flared up again.
"The pain in my wrist came back," she wrote on social media at the time, adding that she needed to give it more time to recover. Three weeks later, she is playing the WTA Finals anyway, as the first alternate.
Eight double faults against Noskova
Tuesday exposed the weak spot that has followed Gauff for most of her career. Noskova beat her in 1 hour and 15 minutes, and the serving numbers explain much of it. Gauff hit 8 aces and 8 double faults, and landed only 23 of 42 first serves, 55 percent. Noskova put 70 percent of her first deliveries in play and struck her ninth ace on match point.
Gauff fell behind by a double break in the opening set. After she lost it 6-3, Noskova reeled off five straight games across the two sets to lead 3-0 in the second, and the comeback never came. The Czech won 63 points to 47 overall.
Against Kostyuk, an aggressive hitter who likes to attack second serves, a delivery that sits up will be punished again.
A strong season without a major
Gauff did not add a third Grand Slam title in 2026, but the year has hardly been quiet. The 22-year-old reached her first Wimbledon semifinal, made the last four at the US Open and won the WTA 1000 title in Cincinnati, beating Pegula in that final. She also played the finals in Miami and Rome.
She arrived in the desert ranked No. 4 with 5,763 points, according to ESPN's rankings, just three points clear of Pegula.
Her autumn was short. Gauff lost in the round of 16 at the China Open, her only event between the US Open and Indian Wells, and Sunday's win over Pegula was her first match in more than a month. This is also her fifth straight WTA Finals, making her the youngest player to reach five in a row since Martina Hingis did it from 1996 to 2000.
How Group 1 got to this point
Four matches into the group, the table already has a clear leader. Linda Noskova opened Sunday with a 6-2, 6-4 win over Kostyuk and followed it on Tuesday with a 6-3, 6-3 dismissal of Gauff. The Czech was the first player in the field to book a semifinal place.
Gauff's only win came in the opener against Pegula, a 6-4, 6-7 (5), 6-2 marathon that lasted 2 hours and 39 minutes. Pegula answered on Tuesday by beating Kostyuk 6-2, 7-5.
That leaves Noskova at 2-0, Gauff and Pegula at 1-1 and Kostyuk at 0-2. The top two advance. Because Gauff lost to Noskova and Pegula owns the better set count, the American cannot afford a slip of any kind today, and even a clean win only keeps her alive until the evening match.
Gauff needs a win and some help
Welcome to VAVEL's live coverage of Coco Gauff vs Marta Kostyuk, the last round-robin match for both players in Group 1 of the WTA Finals. First serve at Indian Wells Tennis Garden is scheduled for 3:00 p.m. ET, noon in the California desert, and we will follow it here set by set.
The stakes are lopsided. Gauff, the No. 4 seed and 2024 champion, is 1-1 in the group and still has a path to the semifinals. Kostyuk is 0-2 and cannot advance, but she can still spoil an American afternoon.
Gauff's problem is that winning may not be enough. She needs a victory here and then a Linda Noskova win over Jessica Pegula in the second match of the day. Any other combination sends Pegula through.
Some numbers worth keeping in mind before the first ball. ESPN's latest WTA rankings have Gauff at No. 4 with 5,763 points and Pegula right behind her at No. 5 with 5,760. Rybakina leads the list with 8,099, and Kostyuk sits 10th with 3,910.
The money is real too. A win today is worth an additional $230,000 to either player, on top of what they have already banked by qualifying. The winner of the whole event can take home up to $3.37 million by going unbeaten, down from the record $5.235 million paid out in 2025.
For Gauff, the biggest incentive is simpler. A loss here ends her season. A win keeps her waiting on Noskova for a few more hours.