American Jessica Pegula stunned top seed Iga Swiatek to make her first Grand Slam semifinal at the U.S. Open.
Pegula, the sixth seed, swept Poland’s Swiatek 6-2, 6-4 for her first win in a Grand Slam quarterfinal in her seventh try.
“I’ve been so many freaking times (to the quarters),” Pegula said in an on-court interview. “I just kept losing, but to great players, I mean, to girls that went on and won the tournament. I know everyone keeps asking me about it, but I was like, I don’t know what else to do. I just need to get there again and, like, win the match. So thank God I was able to do it. And finally, finally, I can say semifinalist.”
Swiatek, the 2022 U.S. Open champ and four-time French Open winner, didn’t lose a set in her first four matches. Against Pegula, she had 41 unforced errors to 12 winners.
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“I was able to kind of jump on her really early, and I think frustrate her,” Pegula said. “I could tell right away she was frustrated on the serve.”
In Thursday’s semifinals, Pegula gets Czech Karolina Muchova, who came back from a 10-month layoff due to a wrist injury to make the U.S. Open last four for a second consecutive year.
At 30, Pegula, the daughter of the Buffalo Bills owners, is the oldest U.S. woman to make her first Slam semifinal in the Open Era (since 1968).
In 2021, she cracked the world top 50 for the first time as she turned 27 — after bowing out in qualifying at Slams on 12 occasions and in the first round another six times.
Since the start of 2022, Pegula has made six Grand Slam quarterfinals and peaked at No. 3 in the rankings.
This year, she changed coaches after a second-round loss at the Australian Open in January, then missed time in the winter and spring due to injury.
“After Australia, I was not OK,” she said. “I was burnt out. I was tired. ... Getting injured then kind of just made me more hungry, because I was like, OK, this sucks. I want to be playing. I’m ready. And to be kind of set back like that I think helped me come back.”
She will move back into the top five after the U.S. Open, supplanting Coco Gauff as the highest-ranked American.
Americans make up half of the semifinalists in the men’s and women’s draws — Pegula, Emma Navarro, Taylor Fritz and Frances Tiafoe. The last time there were multiple American men and American women in the semifinals of the same Slam was the 2003 U.S. Open.