{"id":22820,"date":"2025-09-05T07:18:46","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T11:18:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/2025\/09\/05\/anisimova-passes-osaka-to-reach-the-final-and-faces-sabalenka\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T07:18:46","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T11:18:46","slug":"anisimova-passes-osaka-to-reach-the-final-and-faces-sabalenka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/2025\/09\/05\/anisimova-passes-osaka-to-reach-the-final-and-faces-sabalenka\/","title":{"rendered":"Anisimova passes Osaka to reach the final and faces Sabalenka"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

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.<\/p>\n

Eighth seed Anishimoba faces first seed Aryna Sabalenka, winning 6-7 (4), 7-6 (3), 6-3 in the final on Saturday.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Anisimova’s No. 23 Osaka exclusion came in a match that ended near 1am on Friday<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

Like Osaka vs. Anishimoba, Thursday’s first semi-finals were very close – closer than Pegra’s Sabalenka’s straight set victory 12 months ago.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Finally, Sabalenka had accumulated more than twice the winners of Pegula 43-21.<\/p>\n

“We were pushing each other,” Pegra said, “every game.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

When asked how she handled those moments, Sabalenka responded with a laugh: “Just praying inside, hoping for the best.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

That meant that Sabalenka had not been competing since Sunday.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

When she returned, Sabalenka increased her play and stabilized her mind when needed.<\/p>\n

“I’ll be out there on Saturday,” she said.<\/p>\n

ESPN’s Doug Greenberg and the Associated Press contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[3714,112,63,2719,237,197,224,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-22820","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-anisimova","9":"tag-faces","10":"tag-final","11":"tag-osaka","12":"tag-passes","13":"tag-reach","14":"tag-sabalenka","15":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22820","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=22820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportsdaily.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}