TENNIS – AMERICAN Jessica Pegula rode her roller-coaster season to reach a second straight US Open semi-final with a clinical 6-3 6-3 win over twice Grand Slam champion Barbora Krejcikova yesterday.
Fourth-ranked Pegula had a dreadful run-up to the year’s final major but has flipped the script and found another gear in New York to set up a last four showdown with world number one and defending champion Aryna Sabalenka.
“I just surprised myself,” said Pegula, who exited early from Cincinnati, Montreal and Washington, and had despaired over her form during practice in the days leading up to the singles main draw.
“I’ll always back myself and figure things out in the end instead of kind of spiraling and letting it go too far.”
Her run to the Flushing Meadows semi-final would have gone a long way towards boosting her confidence considering she suffered a first round exit at Wimbledon three days after beating Iga Swiatek in the Bad Homburg final.
“It was kind of back to the drawing board,” said Pegula, who has reached the last four without dropping a set.
“The goal was to simplify things and to get me back playing my game.”
She was showing some of her best level on Tuesday as she fired off 17 winners to beat the unseeded Czech Krejcikova, who saved eight match points in a fourth-round thriller against Taylor Townsend but ran out of gas against the 2024 runner-up.
Krejcikova missed an overhead shot in the second game and was seen repeatedly rubbing her eyes as she struggled to deal with fatigue following two bruising back-to-back three-set matches, surrendering her serve with a double fault.
She broke back when Pegula sent a backhand into the net in the seventh game but Krejcikova immediately handed the advantage back to the American by dropping her serve again.
Pegula broke the Czech to love with a backhand winner down the line in the opening game of the second set.
Playing in her first US Open quarter-final in four years, Krejcikova appeared to be heading for a swift defeat as she fell behind 4-1 with Pegula having secured the double break after the errors kept flying off her Czech rival’s racket.
Although Krejcikova showed some signs of life as she regained one of the breaks in the sixth game, the effort only delayed the inevitable.
Two double faults in the final game capped a miserable day for Krejcikova, while a beaming Pegula soaked in the roaring cheers from the Arthur Ashe Stadium crowd after wrapping up the lopsided win.
“It’s not fun to go out there and stress yourself out and be worried about how you’re playing every second of the day,” she said. “I definitely did that for a few weeks, but I guess I got over it.”
Meanwhile, former champion Carlos Alcaraz continued his imperious march at the US Open by reaching the semi-finals and staying on course for a potentially high-voltage showdown with 24-times Grand Slam winner Novak Djokovic.
The second-seeded Spaniard produced yet another clinical display to beat Czech 20th seed Jiri Lehecka 6-4 6-2 6-4 in the quarter-finals at a sunbathed Arthur Ashe Stadium and secured his spot in the last four without dropping a set this year.
Alcaraz can take the world number one ranking from Jannik Sinner if he emerges triumphant in New York at the end of the fortnight, but is trying not to think about that at this stage.
“If I think about the world number one spot too much, I’m going to put pressure on myself and I don’t want to do that,” Alcaraz said.
“I just want to step on court, try to do my things, follow my goals and try to enjoy as much as I can.”
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