Ben Shelton \u200cbeat Carlos Alcaraz in a five-set thriller that finished at 3:33 am<\/a>, breaking the record for the latest ever finish at the US Open.<\/p>\nZheng had cultivated a \u200creputation as one of the tournament’s finest comeback artists but ran \u2060out of gas against Rybakina, losing 3-6, 6-1, 6-4 as \u200cthe Kazakh chipped away at her defences after \u200covercoming early mistakes.<\/p>\n
“Becoming the WTA number one is something I’ve dreamed about since I was a young girl, it means so much to me,” said Rybakina, who dethroned Sabalenka at the top of the rankings.<\/p>\n
“I’m so proud of this moment. I want to thank my whole team for their support and being able to celebrate this achievement with me.”<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Gauff got off to a dreadful start before \u200brecovering \u200cto beat Russian 19-year-old Andreeva.<\/p>\n
Gauff improved her level dramatically across the match, saving \u200cmatch points in the \u200csecond-set tiebreak to move into the last four of her home slam for just the second time.<\/p>\n
“Elena \u2014 she’s the new world number one so it’s going to be a tough match,” Gauff said.<\/p>\n
“I’m looking \u200cforward to the battle. These are the moments you live for.”<\/p>\n
Sabalenka and American third seed Jessica Pegula are in the other semifinal.<\/p>\n
Pegula is the only woman left without a grand slam title to her name, while Sabalenka is trying to win the US Open to avoid going major-less for the first time since 2022.<\/p>\n
If Rybakina and Sabalenka progress, it will mark their second meeting in a major final this year, after Rybakina won the Australian Open title in January.<\/p>\n
Reuters\/ABC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elena Rybakina ensured she will leave Flushing Meadows as the new world number one after a comprehensive win…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":886199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[4909,64,63,18937,20336,59261,45068,85,747,1751],"class_list":["post-886198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-aryna-sabalenka","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-coco-gauff","tag-elena-rybakina","tag-mirra-andreeva","tag-qinwen-zheng","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-us-open"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886198","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=886198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/886199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=886198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=886198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=886198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}