Eighty minutes, and Pegula never got in
Aryna Sabalenka walked onto Arthur Ashe wearing white headphones and then spent 80 minutes making a crowd that wanted somebody else to win completely irrelevant. She beat Jessica Pegula 7-5, 6-2 on Thursday night and reached a fourth consecutive US Open final.
The winner count finished 29 to 12. Sabalenka faced one break point in the whole match, against one of the best returners in the game, and won 14 of the 19 points played on Pegula’s second serve. By her own reckoning it was the best tennis she has produced in this fortnight.
“No complaints, I was super happy I was able to pull off such super tennis,” she told ESPN on court afterwards.
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The numbers are getting hard to read
That was Sabalenka’s 19th straight win at Flushing Meadows. Her career record at the tournament now stands at 40-6. It also carried her into an eighth consecutive Grand Slam hard-court final, the longest such run anybody has put together in the Open Era.
She has beaten Pegula three times in a row in New York, a sequence that takes in the 2024 final and the 2025 semifinal. On Saturday afternoon she goes for a third US Open title in a row, something no woman has done since Serena Williams between 2012 and 2014.
The opening set lasted 43 minutes and turned in the twelfth game, where Sabalenka reached triple set point with a crosscourt forehand return and closed it out with a backhand Pegula could only put in the net. She took eight of the last nine points. In the second set she broke for 3-1 with a forehand struck at 91 mph, backed it up immediately for 4-1, and the remainder was paperwork.
A final against the woman taking her ranking
Sabalenka loses the world No. 1 spot on Monday after 99 weeks, to Elena Rybakina, who becomes the 30th woman to hold it. Rybakina is also the opponent on Saturday. Sabalenka leads the head-to-head 10-7, though Rybakina has won four of their six meetings in finals.
Pegula was asked what she had walked into. “I don’t know who pissed her off today,” she said. “She played insane.” Sabalenka heard about the line later and answered it: “Better not to make me mad.”
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