NEW YORK – Amanda Anishimova fought down the set in a thrilling US Open semi-final on Thursday night, reaching her second Grand Slam final in a row.
Eighth seed Anishimoba faces first seed Aryna Sabalenka, winning 6-7 (4), 7-6 (3), 6-3 in the final on Saturday.
Sabalenka beat fourth-placed Jessica Pegula 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 in the semi-finals on Thursday night in the morning semi-finals last year. Since Serena Williams won three consecutive wins between 2012 and 2014, she became the first woman to win a consecutive championship at Flushing Meadows and took one win.
Anisimova’s No. 23 Osaka exclusion came in a match that ended near 1am on Friday
“I wasn’t sure I was going to pass the finish line so I tried to dig deeper,” said Anishimoba, who needed three match points to get the job done. “Today was a huge battle.”
At Wimbledon in July, Anishimova was runner-up to Iga Swiatek, who beat 6-0 and 6-0 in the title match. However, Anisimova recovered quickly enough past Swiatek in two sets of the US Open Quarter Finals.
Now born in New Jersey and raised in Florida, Anishimova, 24, has earned another shot after winning her first Grand Slam trophy. This is the fifth consecutive women’s final in a slam involving American women.
However, Sabalenka opened as a favorite of the -250 in the final, while Anisimova was +190 according to Odds of ESPN BET. Sabalenka attracted a major 22.9% of the handle in the future market for tournament winners at BETMGM. Anisimova opened at +2500 before the tournament.
She is the first opponent to defeat Osaka in the second half of the Grand Slam tournament. Before this loss, Osaka had been totaling 13-0 over his career in the Major Quarter Finals, semi-finals and finals.
“To be honest, I’m not sad. It’s really weird. Well, it’s not strange because I feel like I’ve done the best I can,” Osaka said. “To be honest, it’s exciting for me, because it’s just that I want to train and try to get better, so just give me my best shot and see what happens. But I don’t think I can get angry or upset with myself.”
Like Osaka vs. Anishimoba, Thursday’s first semi-finals were very close – closer than Pegra’s Sabalenka’s straight set victory 12 months ago.
Since then, Sabalenka has been runner-up for the Madison Keys of the Australian Open in January and the Madison Keys of the Cocogoff of the French Open in June and was eliminated in the Wimbledon semi-finals by Anisimoba in July.
On her first chance to finish off the semi-finals with Pegra, the defending champion slapped what should have been on top of the net easily and stared at the ground.
On Sabalenka’s second chance, she missed a clumsy volley. And later admitted that we should not move forward as we only got 15 for 27 minutes online.
Very good at the key moments of the high stakes, high tension final set, Sabalenka held it together and converted a third match point to eventually pass Pegula.
“I was very emotional. I said, ‘Oh, well, that wasn’t happening. Please close this match,'” Sabalenka later explained. “The whole game, I keep telling myself, (on) the next thing, one at a time, don’t worry about the past. Try it better at the next point.”
The retractable roof of the Arthur Ashe Stadium was closed before the semi-finals began, resulting in gusts of wind blew up to 30 mph, and rain fell on the way to play.
In indoor conditions, the fourth Pegra played as cleanly as possible in the first and third sets, creating only three forced errors each. But in the second, that count was nine.
Finally, Sabalenka had accumulated more than twice the winners of Pegula 43-21.
“We were pushing each other,” Pegra said, “every game.”
All night, Pegra went after her return, made a big cut and didn’t play it safely. This was the key. Sabalenka saved all four breakpoints he faced in the final set.
“It was really high level. I really don’t know what else to say,” Pegra said. “I don’t know how I didn’t come back third.”
When asked how she handled those moments, Sabalenka responded with a laugh: “Just praying inside, hoping for the best.”
Neither she nor Pegra had lost a set in the tournament by Thursday, but Sabalenka had to go through four matches rather than five to reach the semi-finals as she withdrew after her semi-final opponent, Mareta Vondrousova, was injured.
That meant that Sabalenka had not been competing since Sunday.
Is she rusted? Certainly it didn’t look like that at first, so Sabalenka used a clever drop shot winner combination to take a break and help him grab the 4-2 lead.
However, Pegra did not fold. In the next game, with thousands of people in the stands roaring at every point the Americans earned, Sabalenka scored a balanced ground stroke with two points, and then double-breaked and quickly broke.
Sabalenka shook her head and smacked her arm on her side. That ended her run of 32 consecutive holds, and she overturned a white towel over her head with a switch. Pegra then broke again, holding back the four-game run that closed the set, this time Sabalenka quickly retrieved his bag and headed for the locker room.
When she returned, Sabalenka increased her play and stabilized her mind when needed.
“I’ll be out there on Saturday,” she said.
ESPN’s Doug Greenberg and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
