World number one Aryna Sabalenka has survived her toughest test of the tournament to beat Wimbledon champion Linda \u200bNoskova 7-6(7\/1), 3-6, 7-6(10\/7) and reach the US Open semifinals for a sixth consecutive year.<\/p>\n
Two-time defending champion Sabalenka had not dropped a set before facing the Czech sixth seed, who fired \u200b18 aces and saved \u200cseven of nine break points but faltered when leading by a break at 2-4 in the final set.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka, chasing a third straight title at Flushing Meadows, next plays the winner of \u200can all-American clash between Jessica Pegula and Emma Navarro.<\/p>\n
“What a battle. What \u2060an incredible player she is. I’m speechless right now because \u200cI was pushing myself to \u200bthe limit this match,” \u200csaid Sabalenka, who has now won 21 of her past 22 matches at the year-end grand slam.<\/p>\n
“In the third set I honestly thought, ‘That’s it, the match is over.’ Probably that’s what helped me to kind of feel loose and just go after my shots. Super happy to get this win.”<\/p>\n
By reaching the final four for a sixth straight time, Sabalenka matched the 2011-2016 run of Serena Williams, during which she won three of her six US Open crowns.<\/p>\n
The Belarusian broke in the second game, whipping a forehand into the corner that Noskova did not even attempt to chase down, but the Czech broke back with a pair of powerful groundstrokes from the baseline in \u200bthe \u200cninth.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka, who reached a record 21 consecutive tiebreak wins at the slams earlier this year, was completely in her element in the opening-set breaker, \u2060where she sprinted through the first \u200csix points.<\/p>\n
But her firepower deserted \u200cher in the second set and she struggled to contain Noskova’s serve before handing the \u200cCzech a 4-2 lead with a double fault.<\/p>\n
After levelling the contest at one set all, Noskova set about pressing home her \u200cadvantage.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka \u200bscreamed in frustration when \u2060a pair of double faults midway through the third set helped her opponent secure another break.<\/p>\n
Noskova seemed to be heading for an upset win before Sabalenka recovered her poise to level the contest in the \u2060eighth game.<\/p>\n
And the Belarusian was right at home again in the decisive tiebreak, clinching it with an ace \u200cbefore giving \u200ccredit to the fans for helping to propel her to \u200bthe win.<\/p>\n
Reuters\/ABC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World number one Aryna Sabalenka has survived her toughest test of the tournament to beat Wimbledon champion Linda…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":884921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[4909,64,63,1750,27488,63944,85,747,1751],"class_list":["post-884920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-aryna-sabalenka","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-emma-navarro","tag-jessica-pegula","tag-linda-noskova","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-us-open"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=884920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/884921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=884920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=884920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=884920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}