Coco Gauff heads into her US Open match with Cristina Bucsa as the clear form line points one way. Bucsa barely made it through her second-round match, and she arrives carrying a months-long cold streak into a meeting that now looks far harder than anything she has handled in New York so far.
That matters on US Open Day 7, when Gauff and Amanda Anisimova are among the names back on the hard courts of New York City. Gauff has already cleared a serious hurdle, beating Paula Badosa after a match in which Badosa played brilliantly, and that result has only sharpened the sense that Bucsa is walking into a much sterner test.
Bucsa did have something to build on in the first round, when she beat Sara Bejlek in a quality match. But the next round undercut that promise. She still needed to scrape through, and that is the part that makes this matchup feel lopsided before a ball is struck: one player is arriving with momentum from a difficult win, the other with a recent record that has not held up over several months.
The comparison gets starker when set beside the rest of the draw. Amanda Anisimova moved through her second-round match against Lilli Tagger even after losing the second set, while Elena Rybakina is also being talked about as playing well, and Zheng has already been dragged into a heavier workload than Madison Keys. In that company, Bucsa’s recent stretch does not read like the profile of someone ready to trouble a top-10 opponent for long.
The next meeting, then, is less about mystery than proof. If Bucsa can turn that first-round win into something more sustainable, she gives herself a chance to make Gauff work. If not, Gauff’s edge should show quickly, and the match will confirm what the recent results already suggest.
