her loss to Sabalenka in the final here last year<\/a>, which was closer than the two-set score suggests. In that match Sabalenka was able to win the big points by ambushing Pegula with her drop shot. This time, however, the American wasn\u2019t just alert for the trap; she sprung one of her own by surprising her opponent with net grazing groundstrokes that had Sabalenka almost dropping to one knee to dig them off the baseline with her slice backhand. That tactic and some more canny redirection is how Pegula broke Sabalenka to cut into the Belarusian\u2019s early 4-2 lead. She broke her again on the way to taking her first set off Sabalenka since they last played each other here during Covid \u2013 when the Billie Jean National Tennis Center played emergency host to the Cincinnati Open.<\/p>\nBut Sabalenka quickly righted the ship, winning the next three games to put pressure on Pegula, who was pushed out of her low-risk, steady-reward game and forced into going for broke. Once out of her element, and pressed to play at a faster pace with the roof closed because of the threat of rain, she became more vulnerable to Sabalenka\u2019s drop shot bushwhacks and was much shakier on serve. At 5ft 7in, Pegula doesn\u2019t produce the most powerful serve, but she can place it with pinpoint accuracy. What\u2019s more, she entered Thursday night ranked second in the tournament in second-serve points won. Thing is: Sabalenka had also distinguished herself as the tournament\u2019s second-best service returner.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, it was Sabalenka\u2019s 43 winners against Pegula\u2019s 32 forced errors that proved the American\u2019s undoing. She struggled to score points on Sabalenka\u2019s serve, had no answer for her opponent\u2019s ferocious power and no tricks left to break her focus. Historically in these big matches, Sabalenka is the one who gives crowds reason to stay alert for the potential of an emotional outburst. This time, it was the usually calm Pegula who showed flashes of frustration. Once again, her steady play was no match for Sabalenka, who with every victory puts her early immature streaks in rearview while making her bid for all-time great status.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were some things, very small things, I could have done differently in the end,\u201d Pegula said. \u201cBut if she\u2019s going to come out and I was hitting some good returns and she\u2019s going to blast first-ball winners, literally some of them on the line, I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m supposed to do about that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sabalenka has built up such a lead in the WTA rankings that she will retain the No 1 spot no matter what happens on Saturday, or the rest of the season \u2013 which might be a consolation if she hadn\u2019t already made clear that she prizes titles over rankings. A victory on Saturday would put Sabalenka at 99 career wins in grand slam main draws. No, it\u2019s not the nice, round number \u2013not yet. But one gets the sense that won\u2019t stop her from working any harder for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ayrna Sabalenka is one win away from defending her maiden US Open title. On Thursday night, the 27-year-old…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133764,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-133763","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\/133763","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=133763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}