By HOWARD FENDRICH AP Tennis Writer
NEW YORK — The questions wouldn’t stop for Jessica Pegula: Why was she 0-6 in Grand Slam quarterfinals heading into her U.S. Open matchup against top-ranked Iga Swiatek? What could Pegula do about it?
Came up during her on-court interview after winning in the previous round. And again at the news conference that followed. And again during a brief TV interview right before striding onto the court at Arthur Ashe Stadium on Wednesday night.
If that all weighed on Pegula, the 30-year-old American hid it well, pulling off a big upset by easily beating Swiatek, 6-2, 6-4, at Flushing Meadows and earning a debut trip to the semifinals at a major.
“There have been so many freaking times, and I just kept losing,” said Pegula, who has won 14 of her past 15 matches, all on hard courts. “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.’”
She will face unseeded Karolina Muchova of the Czech Republic on Thursday for a berth in the final.
Muchova, the runner-up to Swiatek at the 2023 French Open, made it to the final four in New York for the second consecutive year with a 6-1, 6-4 victory over No. 22 seed Beatriz Haddad Maia earlier Wednesday.
“I know she has a lot of experience going deep in Slams,” the sixth-seeded Pegula said of Muchova, whom she defeated at the Cincinnati Open last month. “I’ll worry about that, maybe, when I wake up in the morning.”
The other women’s match Thursday also will feature an American making her major semifinal debut, No. 13 Emma Navarro, against No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka, who has won the past two Australian Open titles. Sabalenka lost to Coco Gauff in the 2023 final in New York; Navarro ended Gauff’s title defense in the fourth round.
There are two Americans in the men’s semifinals, too, but they’ll face each other: No. 12 Taylor Fritz takes on No. 20 Frances Tiafoe on Friday. The other men’s matchup that day will be No. 25 Jack Draper against No. 1 Jannik Sinner or No. 5 Daniil Medvedev, the last remaining past U.S. Open winner in the field.
Pegula’s win guaranteed the tournament will feature multiple American men and women in the semifinal round for the first time since 2003 (Andre Agassi and Andy Roddick; Lindsay Davenport and Jennifer Capriati).
The lopsided nature of Pegula’s win was surprising, but she did not think this day would never arrive.
“I knew I could do it. I just had to go out and execute my game and not get frustrated,” she said. “Luckily I felt like I was able to take advantage of some things she wasn’t doing well very early and then was able to kind of ride that momentum throughout the match.”
Swiatek served poorly in the first set and her forehand was a real problem, with 22 of her 41 unforced errors coming on that side. Pegula made only 22 unforced errors in all and used terrific defense to keep forcing Swiatek to hit an extra shot.
Pegula repeatedly did what seemed nearly impossible lately against Swiatek, who counts the 2022 U.S. Open among her five Grand Slam titles and has led the WTA rankings for most of the past 2½ years: break her serve.
Entering Wednesday, Swiatek had lost just a pair of service games across four matches in the tournament, both in the first round – and she didn’t even face a single break point in any of her most recent three contests. That’s all part of why the 23-year-old from Poland was listed as a -350 money-line favorite against Pegula, according to BetMGM Sportsbook.
But Pegula, whose parents own the NFL’s Buffalo Bills and NHL’s Buffalo Sabres, didn’t have much trouble in that department, especially at the outset, breaking in each of Swiatek’s initial two service games, which both ended with double-faults, and three of the first six.
It helped that Swiatek was unable to properly calibrate her first serves early, putting just 2 of 12 – 16.7% – in play at the start, only 36% for the opening set.
Even as the games kept going in her favor, Pegula didn’t show much perceptible emotion, whether grabbing a 4-0 lead just 21 minutes in or taking up that set, which was greeted with a slight shake of her left fist as she walked to her sideline seat.
Swiatek didn’t hide her thoughts that well. She smacked her racket against the top of the net. She slapped her right thigh after a forehand flew wide to get broken yet again and trail 4-3 in the second set.
Fifteen minutes later, it was over.
After losing to Gauff in the U.S. Open semifinals in 2023, Muchova needed surgery on her right wrist in October and was off the tour for about 10 months, returning this June. That was the latest in a series of injuries for Muchova, who called it “one of the worst ones that I had.”
“Now, looking back,” she said, “I’m, like, ‘Oh, it actually flew by, the time, and I feel strong again.’”
Muchova dominated the first set, racing to a 5-0 lead and finishing it off in 35 minutes. Then it became a test in the second, with both players struggling physically on a sunny afternoon.
Muchova left the court at one point for what she said was a needed trip to the bathroom, while Haddad Maia appeared to be pointing to her chest and trying to breathe deeply midway through the set before burying her head in a towel as trainers attended to her.
Muchova has had to get used to dealing with pain.
She had just made her second major semifinal of 2023, having lost to Swiatek in the French Open final, when she had to stop playing following the U.S. Open. When she finally got back to the tour this year, it left time for only 11 matches before returning to Flushing Meadows.
That was enough for Muchova to rediscover her game. She hasn’t dropped a set in her five matches and finished off this one with an ace down the middle.
Muchova, who missed most of the first half of the 2022 season because of back, abdominal and ankle problems, said she didn’t like to talk about her injuries.
“I’ve been through a lot of them,” the 28-year-old said.
Many fans hadn’t even taken their seats at Arthur Ashe Stadium when Muchova broke Haddad Maia in a 14-point game to take a 2-0 lead. The Brazilian faced that same deficit in her third-round match against Anna Kalinskaya but won the next game to start a turnaround, helped in part by a video review that gave her a point.
The U.S. Tennis Association acknowledged the next day that Haddad Maia’s shot was illegal, but the chair umpire wasn’t given the relevant replay that would have shown that.
Muchova wouldn’t allow a turnaround this time, denying Haddad Maia what would have been the second major semifinal of her career. She got to that stage in the French Open last year, but said she had trouble concentrating Wednesday.
“I didn’t put pressure on me because of her. It was me and myself, it was my ghosts inside my mind and I know all the tennis players have that,” Haddad Maia said. “Today was like an inner fight. I couldn’t manage that.”
DRAPER INTO SEMIS
Draper powered into his first Grand Slam semifinal, beating Alex de Minaur, 6-3, 7-5, 6-2, to become the first man since 2020 to reach the final four at the U.S. Open without dropping a set.
The No. 25 seed from Britain relied on his serve that reached 128 mph to set up some of his 40 winners in the match, and he broke the 10th-seeded de Minaur’s serve six times.
Draper is the first British man to reach the U.S. Open semifinals since Andy Murray won the title in 2012.
“It’s amazing. To be out here, my first match on the biggest court in the world, honestly, it’s a dream come true for me,” the 22-year-old Draper said.
Draper has dealt with his own physical struggles. He beat eighth-seeded Felix Auger-Aliassime in the second round of his U.S. Open debut in 2022, but then he stopped playing in his next match because of a leg injury. That seemed like a distant memory Wednesday against de Minaur, an Australian who had won all three of their matchups.
“I feel the best, fitness-wise, I’ve been in a long, long time, and I think that’s where Alex has sort of got me in the past,” Draper said. “I also think he was maybe struggling a little bit today with something, which may have helped me.”
YOUNG CAN RETIRE A WINNER WITH TOWNSEND
For as long as Taylor Townsend has had a racket in her hand, Donald Young and his family have been in her life.
That racket began in her right hand, but thanks to Young’s influence, she switched to swinging it with her left, just like he does. Young’s mother played doubles with Townsend’s mother. His father was Townsend’s first coach. And it was Young, a fellow Black native of Chicago, who made Townsend believe that a professional tennis career was possible.
That’s why it’s so meaningful that she might help the 35-year-old Young end his career on Thursday as a Grand Slam champion by winning the U.S. Open mixed doubles final, his last match before retiring from tennis.
“This is the decision. I’m happy with it and hopefully go one more – and it’d be really a dream come true and kind of a storybook ending for me,” Young said.
They beat the eighth-seeded team of Aldila Sutjiadi and Rohan Bopanna, 6-3, 6-4, on Tuesday night in the semifinals. Afterward, Townsend, 28, told fans that she wouldn’t be on the court in front of them in Louis Armstrong Stadium if not for Young’s impact.
He was the top-ranked player at the junior level in 2005, a year after turning pro. The ring bearer at the wedding of Townsend’s parents had grown up to become one of the young stars of American men’s tennis.
“Him winning junior Wimbledon, junior Australian Open, going onto the tour, breaking out on tour and then coming home and being able to bring that accomplishment to us and being able to see that stuff, it was the closest that I ever had to being near anyone that was doing this at this level,” Townsend said.
“So when he asked me to play, I just felt like it was an honor to be able to close that book for him, because he kind of opened that for me in that sense.”
Townsend, like Young, would top the junior rankings, when she won the junior singles and doubles titles at the Australian Open in 2012 and became the first American girl in three decades to hold the year-end No. 1 junior world ranking.
But both endured tough times on tour in the years that followed.
Young climbed to his career high of No. 38 in 2012, but a 17-match losing streak would send him tumbling. That same year, The Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. Tennis Association coaches decided that the then-16-year-old Townsend needed to work on her fitness, sending her back to their Florida training center rather than cover her expenses to play in one of its tournaments.
But even as they struggled, Young and Townsend were providing hope to others. Townsend said she recently ran into Young at the club where they used to play, and it was emotional seeing so many Black kids who looked up to her like she looked up to Young.
“It’s amazing because it really shows that we’re trending in the right direction,” Townsend said. “And for me personally, in my experience, seeing that and being able to have the visual representation, to see something that looked like me, that acted like me or that I could relate to in some shape or form, gave that little bit of hope that you could do it, too.”
Townsend’s career has been on the rise since she returned to the tour in 2022 after giving birth to her son. She has climbed into the top 50 in singles and is even better in doubles, winning the Wimbledon title in July with Katerina Siniakova. They are seeded third in Flushing Meadows and have reached the semifinals.
Young never reached the level of stardom that some predicted. He hasn’t won a match on tour since 2021 and doesn’t even play on it anymore, having switched to pro pickleball.
“Hindsight is 20/20, it didn’t exactly get to where I wanted it to be,” Young said of his career. “But how I choose to look at it is, if you asked the 10, 12-year-old me about the career I’ve had, he’d be super excited and pumped about it.”
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The USTA gave them a wild card into the mixed doubles draw for Young’s farewell and the duo has made the most of it. With two lefties on the court, they are a tricky team to play, forcing opponents to seek angles that are more easily found against righties.
Young actually is a righty, using that hand to eat and write, but plays tennis left-handed. Townsend also began playing with her right hand, mimicking her older sister, before training under Donald Young Sr. She struggled to keep her balance while moving, and Illona Young recommended she try playing lefty, like her son.
“So from that point we started drilling everything on the left side,” Townsend said, “and here we are.”
On Thursday, she and Young will play the third-seeded team of Italians Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori, a chance to add a memory to all the ones they already share.
“So either way it goes I’m really excited and happy, again, I can share it with a person really close like family,” Young said.
AP sports writer Brian Mahoney contributed to this story.