Coco Gauff was taken to the limit by Leylah Fernandez in a three-set thriller, 6-4, 4-6, 7-5, on Sunday to advance to the third round at the China Open.

The defending China Open champ showed her resilience after leading 5-2 with a match point in the decider, but eventually needed 2 hours and 45 minutes to claim victory. 

In their previous two matches on hard courts, Gauff had not dropped a set to Fernandez. This time around, Fernandez gave the No.2 seed Gauff all that she could handle.

Following the match, Gauf saluted her opponent for her performance.

"She definitely played great tennis," Gauff said. "I thought she was being aggressive, striking the ball pretty well. She wasn't really giving me many free points either. I wish I was more aggressive in some moments. I could tell she stepped up the aggressiveness in the second. I think in that 3-2 game on those break points, I should have put the ball deeper and maybe tried to get her to open up the court.”

"The conditions were so slow, which I feel like she does well with, because she likes to take the ball so early," Gauff continued. "So I felt like my heaviness wasn't doing a lot with her as the balls got older. I found when I had new balls, I would win, like, two or three games in a row."

"I think the toughest part was just dealing with the conditions and trying to feel like I could hit through her, but I couldn't do that as well today as I felt like I did earlier this year,” she added.

Gauff will next face No. 16 Belinda Bencic on Monday at 11:00 EST.