Four games that settled it
Elina Svitolina led 3-2 in the deciding set on Louis Armstrong Stadium, break in hand, night session, crowd with her. She did not win another game.
Anna Kalinskaya closed out the third round 6-3, 2-6, 6-3 in the early hours of Saturday, ending the tournament of the ninth seed and putting herself in the fourth round at Flushing Meadows.
The shape of the match was set early. Kalinskaya took the opening set 6-3 without letting the Ukrainian settle into any rhythm. Svitolina answered in the second, 6-2, and walked into the decider looking like the player who had solved the problem.
The break that led nowhere
Svitolina broke first in the third and moved 3-2 ahead. Then the match emptied out in one stretch: four consecutive games to Kalinskaya, and the No. 21 seed was through.
The ranking gap made this an upset on paper. Svitolina came into the night with 4,689 points and a place at No. 9 in the world; Kalinskaya sits 23rd on 1,933. On the court there was very little in it, and almost none of it in the third set.
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No handshake at the net
The two players did not shake hands at the end. Svitolina has declined to shake hands with Russian and Belarusian opponents since 2022 and has held that line at every tournament since, so the ending in New York surprised nobody who follows her.
Kalinskaya now meets Emma Navarro, who took out seventh seed Karolina Muchova 6-3, 7-5 earlier in the day. That is two top-10 seeds gone from the same corner of the draw inside a few hours, and the 26th seed against the 21st for a quarter-final place.
Sixth seed Linda Noskova survived the other half of the day. She led Ann Li by a double break in the second set, watched the American drag it back and take the tie-break after trailing 5-2, then reset to win 6-2, 6-7, 6-2. Marta Kostyuk is her reward, after a 6-3, 6-2 win over 18th seed Ekaterina Alexandrova.
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