Osaka never got hold of it
Elena Rybakina opened the Louis Armstrong night session by taking the first set off Naomi Osaka 6-1. She broke again in the second and closed it 6-4. The whole thing ran barely longer than an hour and gave the 13th seed almost nothing to build on.
Rybakina put the win down to depth and placement rather than pace. She said she was hitting lines and playing deep, and that against a returner as aggressive as Osaka the serve had to hold up. It did. Osaka came into the fourth round chasing a second straight US Open semi-final and leaves in the last 16.
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A fortnight she nearly missed
The context makes the scoreline stranger. Rybakina arrived in New York carrying a foot problem and spent seven days before the tournament without hitting a ball, unable to do much in the gym and restricted on movement. She has said her team were not sure she would be able to play at all, and that the first days in New York were spent testing the foot rather than practising.
She won her opening match in 74 minutes anyway. Four rounds later she is into the quarter-finals here for the first time in her career, having never previously gone past the fourth round at Flushing Meadows. Melbourne is where her 2026 turned, with the Australian Open title in January.
Zheng stands between her and the ranking
Qinwen Zheng is next, and the Chinese player has been the story of the bottom half. She trailed Madison Keys 5-0 in the third set of their third-round match and won seven straight games. She then took out Iga Swiatek 7-5, 6-3 in the day session on Ashe.
Beat her and Rybakina replaces Aryna Sabalenka at the top of the rankings when the tournament finishes. Rybakina has been careful about how she frames that. The ranking follows the titles, she said, and the titles are the point. Zheng, she added, has found her form and is playing with confidence after a run of consecutive wins, which makes her dangerous.
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