INDIAN WELLS, Calif. (AP) — Coco Gauff defeated fellow American Jessica Pegula 6-4, 6-7 (5), 6-2 in her first match of the 2026 WTA Finals on Sunday.
Competing in Group 1 of the eight-woman field’s round-robin draw, Gauff improved to 6-5 in her career against Pegula after two hours, 39 minutes at Indian Wells Tennis Garden.
“I was having a lot of fun today,” the 22-year-old No. 4 seed said after the match, joking she left bits of rubber from her shoes on court. “I had a match point in the second (set) and I didn’t get too down on myself…I think today, the key was just trying to be aggressive, but I also had to run a lot.”
Gauff, who won the WTA Finals in 2024 and was playing her first match in over a month, held serve from 0-40 down at 4-4 in the first set and then earned the lone break of the set in the following game to take early control in the match.
Pegula took a 5-1 lead in the second only to lose five straight games and face match point at 5-6, but she regained control in the subsequent tiebreaker and leveled the match with a forehand return winner.
The momentum swung back towards Gauff in the final set. The two-time Grand Slam champion won the first three games on her way to a 5-2 advantage. A missed overhead from Pegula earned Gauff two more match points, and Gauff let out a celebratory roar after clinching the match on her third opportunity.
Gauff will next face No. 8 seed and reigning Wimbledon champion Linda Noskova, who defeated alternate Marta Kostyuk 6-2, 6-4 in the first match of the day.
Kostyuk, who will face Pegula after both lost their opening round-robin matches, was a late substitute for world No. 1 Elena Rybakina. Rybakina, last year’s WTA Finals winner and this year’s Australian Open and U.S. Open champion was forced to withdraw from the season-ending championships citing a viral illness.
Indian Wells, which is home to the annual BNP Paribas Open, is hosting the WTA Finals after instability in the Middle East led to a move away from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where the event had been held since 2024. The WTA Finals is set to move again in 2027 to Charlotte, North Carolina.
See AP’s full tennis coverage here
FILE - Coco Gauff, of the United States, returns the ball to Elena Rybakina, of Kazakhstan, during the women's singles semifinals of the U.S. Open tennis championships, on Sept. 10, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File)
Saudi Arabia said it intercepted incoming missiles targeting the kingdom's capital and other regions on Sunday, with falling debris damaging a building belonging to the state-owned oil giant Aramco in Riyadh’s financial district.
Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates said it rescued 22 crew members after a fire broke out aboard a cargo ship in the Sea of Oman, as risks to commercial shipping in the region remain high. And in Israel, opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot formally got the first chance to form a new government.
Here is the latest news from the Middle East on Sunday. Read our full coverage here.
U.S. President Donald Trump is set to meet Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani at the White House on Monday, according to his official schedule.
Witnesses in Riyadh said they heard a loud explosion Sunday morning and described damage at an Aramco building in the King Abdullah Financial District. The witnesses spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns.
The Saudi Energy Ministry said there were no casualties at the Aramco facility.
The Saudi-led coalition said its air defenses intercepted two ballistic missiles and two cruise missiles targeting Riyadh and other regions early Sunday, accusing the Iran-backed Houthis of launching the weapons.
The Houthis' military spokesperson, Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree, claimed in a statement Sunday that they had hit Riyadh’s financial district and other targets in response to attacks in recent days on a village and a market in Yemen, which he said left dozens dead or wounded and blamed on Saudi Arabia.
— By Sally Abou AlJoud in Beirut
The death toll from airstrikes that hit homes in Yemen’s capital Sanaa climbed to 44 people, mostly women and children, Houthi health authorities said Sunday.
The strikes Saturday in the village of al-Shariya, east of Sanaa, wounded 40 others including eight children and nine women, said Anees al-Asbahi, spokesman of the Houthi-run Health Ministry.
Among the dead were 21 children and 10 women, he said, making the strikes as one of the deadliest attacks in the latest bout of violence in Yemen’s year-along civil war.
Rescue teams were still searching the area for missing people, suggesting that the death toll could increase, Al-Asbahi said.
He blamed Saudi Arabia for the strike, which came during a major escalation in fighting between the Iranian-backed rebels and the kingdom and has killed hundreds of people in Yemen and dozens in Saudi Arabia.
The UAE National Guard said the crew members — all of Arab nationalities — were in stable condition following a rescue when their cargo ship caught fire in the Sea of Oman. The National Guard did not identify the vessel or specify the cause of the fire.
The British military organization that monitors maritime security incidents said Sunday that a tanker caught fire on Saturday northwest of Khasab, Oman, prompting the evacuation of its crew. It was unclear whether it was the same incident.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Sunday evening formally gave opposition politician Gadi Eisenkot the first chance to form the next government.
While complex coalition negotiations still lie ahead, this is a significant step in the former military chief’s effort to oust Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, after elections held in a deeply divided country scarred by the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, and the multifront wars they triggered.
A large sandstone slab collapsed onto makeshift tents housing displaced Palestinians in central Gaza on Sunday evening, killing at least four people, including three children, according to health officials at Al-Aqsa Martyrs and Nasser hospitals.
Civil defense workers and residents in the city of Deir al-Balah searched through the rubble largely using their bare hands. Gaza has been battered by torrential rains over the past few days, which is believed to have contributed to the collapse.
Most of Gaza’s 2 million Palestinians are still displaced or live in tent camps, where they grapple with poor conditions and overcrowding.
The president told CNN in a phone interview on Sunday that as long as the U.S. continues to see progress in negotiations with Tehran and they sign a “strong agreement,” it’s “highly unlikely it’s going to be necessary” to resume strikes.
The president said, however, that the U.S. had identified infrastructure targets, including 38 bridges, that it would strike if military action resumes.
The region has been on edge over the possibility of a renewed all-out war.
The strategic Khor Mor gas field in Iraq’s semiautonomous northern Kurdish region was targeted by a drone attack late Sunday, officials said.
No casualties were reported and it was not immediately clear how much damage was caused, but the attack took the facility offline, causing widespread power outages.
Khor Mor is one of northern Iraq’s most productive natural gas fields, and its output is used to fuel power plants. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
Residents on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz reported hearing several explosions late Sunday evening, Iranian state media reported.
Similar reports have been made in previous days, with no official confirmation or claims as to what might have caused them.
Asked about the reports before heading to a G7 foreign ministers meeting in Paris, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio didn’t directly confirm new strikes but said the U.S. will make defensive actions.
“If there’s a clear and present threat to shipping or to our forces in the region, we have a right to defend ourselves,” Rubio told reporters in Florida.
Iran hanged three men Sunday in Karaj who were convicted of armed riot, damage to public properties and cooperation with Israel and the United States during nationwide anti-government protests in January, state TV reported.
Iran has hanged more than two dozen people on similar charges in various cities. International rights groups say political prisoners in Iran are tried in secretive courts without due process.
The protests, some of the largest ever held against the Islamic Republic's government, were largely stamped out when the United States and Israel went to war with Iran on Feb. 28.
An Israeli strike on Sunday killed two Palestinians, a man and woman, in Muwasi, a tent camp area on Gaza’s coast, said health officials at Nasser hospital.
Israel’s military said it had struck a “Hamas terrorist” in the area.
Sunday’s strikes came more than a year after a ceasefire deal was reached between Israel and Hamas, yet Israel still launches near-daily strikes on the enclave.
The State Department said Sunday that it had declared Ibrahim Charara, Lebanon’s consul general in Detroit, “persona non grata” after reviewing posts from up to five years ago celebrating the 1983 Hezbollah attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut. The posts were first reported by the Washington Free Beacon.
“Anyone in the United States who celebrates or justifies terrorist attacks has no place in our country,” the department said.
This report will be updated throughout the day as new developments emerge.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog, right, tasks Gadi Eisenkot, leader of the Yashar ("Straight") Party, with forming a government at the President's Residence in Jerusalem, Sunday, Nov. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Palestinians walk through a tent camp housing displaced people amid buildings destroyed by Israeli strikes during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza City, Sunday, Nov. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Displaced Palestinian children repair tents damaged by heavy rain in Gaza City, Sunday, Nov. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Gadi Eisenkot, leader of the Yashar ("Straight") party, waves an Israeli flag onstage following the release of the first exit poll results in Israel's general election in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
This image taken from video released by Houthi-run Al-Masirah TV on Saturday, Nov. 7, 2026, shows a man watching smoke rise following what the channel described as an airstrike by Saudi-backed government forces on a town near Sanaa, Yemen. (Al-Masirah TV via AP)
