U.S. Open<\/a> semifinals without hitting a ball on Tuesday night because the woman she was supposed to face in the quarterfinals, 2023 Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova, pulled out of their match with an injured knee.\n <\/p>\n\n According to the U.S. Tennis Association, Vondrousova is the first woman to give her opponent a walkover \u2014 the term for when a tennis player withdraws from a match before it begins \u2014 at the U.S. Open in the quarterfinals or later since 1988, when Steffi Graf advanced to the final when Chris Evert did not play their semifinal.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cI tried my best to take the court today, but during the warm-up, I felt again my knee, and after consultation with the tournament doctor decided not to risk aggravating the injury,\u201d Vondrousova, a 26-year-old left-hander from the Czech Republic, said in a statement released by the USTA. \u201cI appreciate all the support this tournament and apologize to the fans who were looking forward to the match.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n She had advanced to the quarterfinals with a three-set victory over 2022 Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina on Sunday night.\n <\/p>\n
\n With one of the two nighttime matches in Ashe scrapped Tuesday, the USTA didn\u2019t replace Sabalenka vs. Vondrousova on the program with another contest, but set up the men\u2019s quarterfinal between 24-time major champion Novak Djokovic and 2024 runner-up Taylor Fritz to begin at 8 p.m. That was originally supposed to start whenever Sabalenka-Vondrousova ended.\n <\/p>\n
\n Sabalenka now will meet No. 4 Jessica Pegula in the semifinals on Thursday. That is a rematch of last year\u2019s championship match at Flushing Meadows, which Sabalenka won in straight sets.\n <\/p>\n
\n Vondrousova has been as high as No. 6 in the WTA rankings but a series of injuries over the years kept off the tour for stretches at a time. That included operations on her wrist in 2022 and on her shoulder last year.\n <\/p>\n
\n She entered the U.S. Open ranked 60th and unseeded.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cSo sorry for Marketa after all she\u2019s been through,\u201d Sabalenka wrote on social media. \u201cShe has been playing amazing tennis and I know how badly this must hurt for her.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Pegula moved into her second Grand Slam semifinal by eliminating two-time major champion Barbora Krejcikova 6-3, 6-3 earlier Tuesday.\n <\/p>\n
\n Pegula had been 0-6 in major quarterfinals until upsetting Iga Swiatek in that round at Flushing Meadws a year ago.\n <\/p>\n
\n Now the 31-year-old American is the first woman to make the final four at the U.S. Open in consecutive years without losing a set since 23-time major champion Serena Williams did it every year from 2011 to 2014.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cI\u2019ve been able to kind of go into those matches and really take care of business,\u201d Pegula said.\n <\/p>\n
\n The last two women\u2019s quarterfinals are scheduled for Wednesday: No. 2 Swiatek vs. No. 8 Amanda Anisimova \u2014 that\u2019s a rematch of last month\u2019s Wimbledon final, which Swiatek won 6-0, 6-0 \u2014 and No. 11 Karolina Muchova vs. No. 23 Naomi Osaka.\n <\/p>\n
\n That will be Osaka\u2019s first Grand Slam quarterfinal since the 2021 Australian Open, where she wound up claiming her fourth major trophy.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Facebook Tweet Email Link New York AP \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 Defending champion Aryna Sabalenka returned to the U.S. Open semifinals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-128941","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}