NEW YORK — Jessica Pegula is again within the quarterfinals on the US Open after a 6-4, 6-2 victory over Diana Shnaider on Monday, her seventh journey to that spherical at a Grand Slam event. Now comes the onerous half: Pegula is 0-6 in main quarterfinals over her profession.
The No. 6-seeded Pegula, an American whose dad and mom personal the Buffalo Payments and the Buffalo Sabres, is on fairly a run in the intervening time, having received 13 of her previous 14 matches, all on onerous courts. That included her second consecutive title in Canada and an look within the remaining on the Cincinnati Open, the place she misplaced to No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka.
“I really feel like there’s been extra stress this 12 months, as a result of I did so effectively coming into this event,” mentioned Pegula, 30. “I need to maintain working my manner and hopefully bringing my finest tennis for the later rounds this time.”
Additionally returning to the quarterfinals was Karolina Muchova, a 6-3, 6-3 winner over No. 5 Jasmine Paolini, the runner-up on the French Open and Wimbledon this season. Muchova loved a breakthrough 2023, attending to the ultimate in Paris and the semifinals in New York, earlier than needing surgical procedure on her proper wrist in October, sidelining her for 10 months.
“This was my worst and most critical damage, I might say. However, I imply, I like the game, so in my head, I used to be like, ‘I’ll do all the pieces I may to [get] higher and check out.’ And right here I’m right this moment,” Muchova mentioned. “I am only a actually comfortable child now.”
Pegula made it to the quarterfinals at Flushing Meadows two years in the past earlier than dropping to No. 1 Iga Swiatek, who went on to win certainly one of her 5 main championships. There could possibly be one other assembly towards Swiatek looming: Pegula subsequent faces the winner of Monday night time’s match between Swiatek and No. 16 Liudmila Samsonova.
Three of Pegula’s six quarterfinal exits at Slams got here towards a No. 1 participant — Swiatek twice and Ash Barty as soon as.
Requested throughout her on-court interview in Arthur Ashe Stadium what she must do to get to the semifinals this time, Pegula joked: “I all the time say I simply have to win the match to get to the semis, after which that’ll remedy all the pieces, proper?”
She continued: “Hear, it does not actually matter to me. I imply, each match is each match. I’ve all the time performed it like that. It simply so occurs to be [the] quarterfinals, however on the identical time, to have the ability to say I have been in that place many, many instances is nice. So I simply must maintain placing myself there and maintain making an attempt to play my sport.”
That sport labored fairly effectively towards the 18th-seeded Shnaider, a 20-year-old Russian who performed one season of school tennis at NC State and received a silver medal in girls’s doubles on the Paris Olympics.
Pegula compiled 22 winners, hit six aces, saved 7 of 9 break factors that she confronted and claimed 5 of Shnaider’s service video games.
“I really feel like I am transferring so a lot better across the court docket,” Pegula mentioned, including that this was the “finest, off the bottom, that I’ve felt.”
