Defending champion Sloane Stephens surprisingly dropped out in the quarter-finals of the US Open. Anastasiya Sevastova (No. 19) lost to third place in the world rankings 2-6, 3-6. 28-year-old Latvia’s first ever semi-final appearance in a Grand Slam tournament. In their biggest match to date, Sevastova will face either six-time Flushing Meadows winner Serena Williams (USA/No. 17) or Karolina Pliskova (Czech Republic/No. 8) on Thursday.
After 1:24 hours Sevastova turned her third match point and could hardly believe her luck. In the last two years, she had failed in the quarter-finals of the last major of the year. This time Sevastova, with her Austrian coach Roland Schmidt, took this hurdle with confidence.
Not least because Stephens was unable to build on her brilliant performances against Elise Mertens (Belgium) and Victoria Azarenka (Belarus) in the round before. The French Open finalist, who was the highest-placed player in the draw after Simona Halep (Romania/No. 1) and Caroline Wozniacki (Denmark/No. 2) broke out early, revealed particular weaknesses.
Stephens could only take advantage of her eighth breakchance – for a 1:2 connection in the second set. Up until that point, Sevastova was the clear dominator, who presented the favourite with her one-handed slice backhand and dangerous stops to unsolvable problems. The American seemed perplexed and kept looking questioningly towards the pits.
Stephens seemed too passive. Significantly, the first set point Sevastova turned after 41 minutes with a forehand winner – it was her ninth winning shot in the opening round. The experienced Latvian, who had previously eliminated among others Ekaterina Makarova (Russia) and Elina Svitolina (Ukraine), who holds 23,771 spectators, was not deterred by the audience in the Arthur Ashe stadium.
Stephens came back to 3-4 in the second set after trailing 4-1, but Sevastova kept a cool head on another muggy day and took revenge for their quarter-final defeat against the American at the last US Open.
In these New York days, Stephens once again presented himself with great self-confidence. When she described how it felt to be the defending champion at her home grand slam, it sounded like this: “Super fun”, “super exciting”, but also “super crazy – even a little “super confusing”. On Tuesday she seemed “super annoyed”.
Stephens had provided for much cheerfulness at the award ceremony last year. The daughter of a fatally injured NFL professional and a college swimmer could not believe it when the $3.7 million winner’s check was handed to her at Arthur Ashe stage: “Wow, that’s a lot of money! The sentence went around the world.
And Stephens was suddenly a star: basketball heroes Dirk Nowitzki and Shaquille O’Neal (“If you beat a legend, you’re a legend yourself”), among others, congratulated the new star in the tennis universe. She had over 200 messages of congratulations on her smartphone after the final triumph over her friend Madison Keys (USA). “It’s cool to tell your kids you’re an open US champion someday,” Stephens said back then.
The way in which she triumphed was all the more impressive when one knows the history: Stephens had not been able to play tennis for months because of a foot operation at the beginning of the 2017 season. A few weeks before her home major in New York, she only finished 934th in the WTA ranking. “Actually, it’s impossible to experience what happened to me,” she said after her triumph, which threw the self-confident Florida woman off course.
After her breakthrough on the most dazzling of all tennis stages, Stephens was defeated eight times in a row – and only won another match in February 2018. In the days of the Miami Open, which she won in the spring, she had also explained what the basis of success is.
Namely by no means primarily the motivation to compete against large and well-known opponents. “When you play against Niculescu and she slips and snipes you to Beijing, when you really have to fight and torture yourself. You’re fighting to get on the center court and play against those girls,” Stephens said.
The dream of defending the title now burst in the quarter-finals. Stephens would have been the first player since Serena Williams in 2014 to repeat her coup at the US Open.
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