{"id":22616,"date":"2025-09-02T14:59:33","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T18:59:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/2025\/09\/02\/jessica-pegra-opened-the-semi-again-without-dropping-open-semis-on-us\/"},"modified":"2025-09-02T14:59:33","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T18:59:33","slug":"jessica-pegra-opened-the-semi-again-without-dropping-open-semis-on-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/2025\/09\/02\/jessica-pegra-opened-the-semi-again-without-dropping-open-semis-on-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Jessica Pegra opened the semi again without dropping open semis on us"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>NEW YORK &#8211; Jessica Pegra, the best seeded American remaining in the US Open Women&#8217;s Single Draw, beat Barbora Cresci Chikova 6-3, 6-3 on Tuesday to make her second semi-final in her career in the Grand Slam tournament.<\/p>\n<p>Pegra failed to advance to the semifinals in her first 23 main draw appearances in the majors before reaching the US Open Final a year ago, losing to Alina Sabalenka a year ago, and was later eliminated in the fourth round at the Australian Open, the third round of the French Open and the first round at Wimbledon.<\/p>\n<p>Returning to the hard court at the US Open was a successful recipe. For the second year in a row, Pegra made the Final Four with Flushing Meadows without dropping a set, and so far has only been pushed past five in one set.<\/p>\n<p>Before Pegra, the last woman to reach the US Open Semi-finals without surrendering the set was Serena Williams, who went four times in a row since 2011-14.<\/p>\n<p>In this tournament, Pegra lost 23 games at the 2016 Australia Open, with American women on their way to the major semifinals since Williams (22 games lost before the semifinals).<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think I&#8217;ve played really good tennis,&#8221; Pegra said. &#8220;I&#8217;m just playing very solid. I&#8217;ve had a very good quick start and I really wanted to do it today, especially with people like the very dangerous (Krezikova).&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sabalenka, the world&#8217;s top women&#8217;s tennis player, could potentially become Pegula&#8217;s next opponent if she defeats Marita Vondrousova in a Tuesday night match. It is also the Arthur Ash Stadium where Pegra did the quick work of Crezikova.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think it&#8217;s crazy to see now, I think it&#8217;s crazy, I think it&#8217;s really comfortable coming here and playing in a massive game with the craziest crowd against the best players and the best courts in the world,&#8221; Pegra said. &#8220;It&#8217;s pretty crazy and that&#8217;s something I didn&#8217;t think I was good at this ten years ago, but I think so.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Pegra, 31, is aiming for her first Grand Slam Championship. She and number 8 Amanda Anishimova are the only Americans remaining in the women&#8217;s singles field.<\/p>\n<p>Krejcikova knocked out one of them, Taylor Townsend. Taylor Townsend was unable to convert eight match points when they met in the 16th round on Sunday. Pegula wasn&#8217;t perfect, but she played enough to keep control at all times, and finally broke Krejcikova to finish the match in under 90 minutes on her first match point attempt.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It really got tough,&#8221; Pegra said. \u201cWhen I was serving 4-1, she had a really good return and we all saw what she did to Taylor.<\/p>\n<p><em>ESPN research and Associated Press contributed to this report. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NEW YORK &#8211; Jessica Pegra, the best seeded American remaining in the US Open Women&#8217;s Single Draw, beat Barbora Cresci Chikova 6-3, 6-3 on Tuesday to make her second semi-final in her career in the Grand Slam tournament. Pegra failed to advance to the semifinals in her first 23 main draw appearances in the majors [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[6072,785,32,2671,2589,6105,198,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-22616","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-dropping","9":"tag-jessica","10":"tag-open","11":"tag-opened","12":"tag-pegra","13":"tag-semi","14":"tag-semis","15":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}