There are rematches that feel routine, and then there are rematches that land like a small piece of tennis history. Gauff vs Rybakina belongs in the second group. Coco Gauff and Elena Rybakina are meeting in the Toronto semifinals on Wednesday for only the second time overall, and for the first time in four years.
That alone gives the match real weight at the National Bank Open in Toronto. The winner will advance to Thursday’s National Bank Open championship, but the appeal of this semifinal is not just the stakes at the end of the week. It is the rarity of the matchup itself. Since their 2022 meeting in Toronto, they have played each other only once.
A rare rivalry with a very specific history
Their first and only previous Toronto meeting came in the 2022 Toronto Round of 32, when Gauff defeated Rybakina 4-6, 7-6, 7-6. That scoreline tells its own story: a match decided by thin margins, extended in the tightest parts, and never really separated by much. Even now, it stands as the clearest reference point for what this rivalry looks like when it is at its most balanced.
That makes Wednesday’s semifinal more than a standard last-four encounter. It is a chance to see how two players with limited shared history handle each other now, after four years of individual development and changing tournament expectations. In a setting like Toronto, where the path to the title can narrow very quickly, familiarity is not the issue. Timing is.
For Gauff, this is an opportunity to turn a difficult but familiar matchup into a step toward another final. For Rybakina, it is a chance to answer a result that once went against her in a match that lasted 2 hours and 50 minutes. The numbers say they have seen very little of each other since then. The stage says the next meeting matters a lot more than the first one did.
Thursday will bring the championship match. Wednesday brings the more intriguing question: when Gauff and Rybakina share a court again, which version of that old Toronto battle comes back first?
