Asked in her press conference about the ongoing battle for the number one ranking, Sabalenka insisted her priority is retaining her US Open title. <\/p>\n
“I’ll be more than happy. Three-peat – sounds great,” she said. <\/p>\n
Sabalenka began the match in cruise control, breaking in sixth seed Noskova’s opening service game and racing into a 5-2 lead, before being broken as she served for the set.<\/p>\n
Although she dominated the subsequent tie-break, the double fault she hit in her last service game \u2013 one of four in the match \u2013 would prove a feature of her performance, as would her failure to convert break points.<\/p>\n
She wasted three early in the second set before conceding a break in the sixth game with a double fault at 30-40 as Noskova forced a decider.<\/p>\n
After hitting two more double faults to be broken for a third time, she looked down and out after Noskova held to love for a 4-2 lead, but won the next three games to turn the match around.<\/p>\n
She then won the tie-break – for a 10th successive time at the US Open, in a run dating back to 2021 – to complete her comeback, sealing the victory with a nerveless second-serve ace.<\/p>\n
This was only Sabalenka’s second quarter-final victory since March, with the top seed unable to replicate her early season hard-court success \u2013 which included titles in Brisbane, Indian Wells and Miami \u2013 on the clay or grass.<\/p>\n
She suffered last-16 exits in Toronto and Cincinnati in the build-up to the US Open, but has rediscovered something approaching her best form at the tournament where she is yet to lose a quarter-final in six attempts.<\/p>\n
“I have to say that knowing that physically my body can handle these matches again, I’m super happy with that,” Sabalenka said. <\/p>\n
“And of course, these kind of tight matches give you so much confidence that you’re back and you’re ready to do anything it takes to get the win. So this match definitely gives me a boost of energy and motivation.”<\/p>\n
For Noskova, this defeat, during which she hit more winners, fewer unforced errors, and saved seven of her nine break points, ends a run of 11 consecutive singles wins at Grand Slams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Asked in her press conference about the ongoing battle for the number one ranking, Sabalenka insisted her priority…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":764337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-764336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764336","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=764336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/764337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=764336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=764336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=764336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}