The last match of a long American day
Emma Navarro finished the job overnight in New York. The 26th seed beat Anna Kalinskaya 6-4, 6-2 in the nightcap of the fourth round, closing a session that had already sent Jessica Pegula and Ben Shelton through.
Kalinskaya arrived seeded 21st and having removed Elina Svitolina in the third round. Navarro gave her almost nothing after the opening exchanges and needed only two sets to reach her second US Open quarter-final.
Her first came in 2024, when she went as far as the semi-finals. That run remains the deepest of her career at any major.
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Pegula next, and the numbers favour her
The quarter-final is all-American. Pegula, seeded third, ran past 16th seed Sorana Cirstea 6-3, 6-4 to reach her second consecutive Grand Slam quarter-final and her fifth at this tournament since 2022.
Pegula reached the final here in 2024, the year Navarro reached the last four. Both careers have been built in this half of the calendar, on hard courts, in front of home crowds, and both have spent the past three seasons parked just outside the trophy conversation.
Only one of them gets another week of it.
What the top half looks like
Aryna Sabalenka is chasing a third straight US Open title and opened Sunday by beating Taylor Townsend 6-4, 6-3 in an hour and a quarter. Her quarter-final is against sixth seed Linda Noskova, who came through a three-set fight with Marta Kostyuk, 7-5, 5-7, 6-4.
Nobody has won three consecutive women’s singles titles in New York since Chris Evert took four in a row between 1975 and 1978. Sabalenka is two matches from the semi-finals and four from that company.
Five of the seven Americans who played fourth-round matches on Sunday won. Navarro was the last of them to get off court, and she did it without needing a third set.
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