The rivalry between Amanda Anisimova and Jessica Pegula is coming back to home soil.<\/p>\n
The two Americans will go head-to-head in the quarterfinals of the Cincinnati Open after both won their Round of 16 matches on Wednesday, setting the stage for their sixth career meeting and first at a U.S. tournament since the 2024 WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Anisimova will come in seeking her first victory against Pegula riding high after a 6-1, 6-4 upset of Wimbledon champion Linda Noskova, while Pegula needed to battle for more than 2 hours in her 6-2, 4-6, 7-5 win over Sorana Cirstea.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Anisimova: Noskova rout ‘a step in the right direction’<\/p>\n
A mid-match rain delay did little to quell Anisimova’s momentum in her third consecutive victory against Noskova. She stormed to the first set in 20 minutes — winning the last 15 points — and did not face a break point in 1 hour and 8 minutes.<\/p>\n
“I feel like I played very well. It’s not easy to play against someone like her, who’s such an incredible player especially off of a Grand Slam win, so it was a very important win for me today,” Anisimova said afterwards.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Eight weeks ago, Anisimova exited Wimbledon in the fourth round in a flurry of frustration, saying that she was struggling to find herself on the court after missing two months with a wrist injury earlier this year. She confessed that beating Noskova was “a step in the right direction” as she approaches the US Open, where she reached the final last year.<\/p>\n
Her three straight wins in Cincinnati mark her most at a tournament since reaching the semifinals at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships in February.<\/p>\n
“Even the last few rounds, I would’ve said the same thing probably,” she said. “It was a bit frustrating at times playing because I know my game wasn’t where I want it to be and I accepted that to try to work with what I had.<\/p>\n
“Today … it was a huge step in the right direction. The way I was playing, it was the way I was playing all of last year, so I was really, really happy and kind of relieved with my performance, knowing that things are starting to click for me and all the hard work is paying off.”<\/p>\n
Despite being 0-5 so far against Pegula, Anisimova said that she “always learn[s] something when I play her and what I need to improve after those matches.”<\/p>\n
“I’m happy with the way that I’m playing, and I’m looking forward to it,” she said.<\/p>\n
Pegula flips the script on windy day<\/p>\n
To establish a 6-2, 4-2 lead against Cirstea, Pegula said she found “a really high level.” But her lead wasn’t comfortable, she confessed after finding her way through in 2 hours and 5 minutes, because of both the elements and increased pressure from Cirstea.<\/p>\n
“I think she did start to play serve a little bit better, hit her forehand a little bit better in that end of that second set, and halfway through, I got myself out of a couple service games,” Pegula said after the match.<\/p>\n
“So you could feel that the momentum could possibly shift. I had a couple chances, I think, on return games that I just had a couple points here and there where I felt like if I would have broken her again, I felt like I could have served it out and I would have been up 5-2, and maybe it wouldn’t have gone to three [sets].<\/p>\n
“But credit to her, she hung in there and had the momentum kind of all the way at the end of the second there. So I’m happy with the way I was able to flip it, even though during the third it was very back and forth. I think the wind kind of made it a little bit awkward for us, just with some of the weird points that we were having. So We were breaking a lot. It was just kind of uncomfortable, and I’m happy with just the way that … even though I got broken a couple times after breaking, I didn’t let it get to me.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The rivalry between Amanda Anisimova and Jessica Pegula is coming back to home soil. The two Americans will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":744330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,1602,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-744329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-text","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=744329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/744330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=744329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=744329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}