For the fourth consecutive year, Aryna Sabalenka will meet an American player in the US Open semifinal. The first semifinal was against Madison Keys in 2023, which she won in a deciding tiebreak after dropping the first set 6-0. The second was in 2024, where beat Emma Navarro in straight sets. She then faced Jessica Pegula in the 2025 US Open semifinal, which she won 4-6, 6-3, 6-4. Now, with either Navarro or Jessica Pegula waiting for her again this year, a reporter noted just how familiar this all must feel by now. “That’s my karma,” Sabalenka joked.
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Pressed further on the specific possibility and challenge of facing Pegula, Sabalenka turned reflective about how much the American has grown as a player.
“Jessica is a really challenging player to play against, and I can say that she really improved a lot in the last couple of years,” she said in the press conference. “She’s really putting me under so much pressure, but I’m loving playing against her because it’s a battle, because it’s a fight, and I love being under pressure and going through tough challenges.”
The history speaks in Sabalenka’s favor against both opponents, but neither matchup has been a one-sided affair. She leads Pegula 9-4 overall, with their most recent meeting coming at Berlin this June, a match Pegula actually won in three sets.
“It’s been a while since we’ve played against each other, but she’s a great mover. She’s playing really smart tennis, and also with the variety of her shots,” Sabalenka said of Navarro. “It’s been really tough to play against her in the last matches that I faced her because every point, you have to work really hard to get the point. So physically, it’s not easy much to handle, but as I said before, I’m ready for it.”
Sabalenka has a tighter 2-1 advantage over Navarro, which includes that 2024 semifinal win, while Navarro’s lone win came earlier in the same year at Indian Wells.
Both Americans earned their spot in the last eight the hard way. Pegula, the third seed, advanced to the quarterfinals by a 6-3, 6-4 victory over Sorana Cirstea, earning her third consecutive trip to the US Open quarterfinals. Navarro, seeded 26th, defeated Anna Kalinskaya 6-4, 6-2 to advance to her fourth career Grand Slam quarterfinal. Their quarterfinal meeting will mark the first all-American women’s matchup at that stage of the US Open since 2015.
That said, whichever American ultimately awaits her, Sabalenka’s own path has already delivered the toughest three-set battle of her season, a win over Wimbledon champion Linda Noskova that pushed her to a sixth straight US Open semifinal. And she has never lost to an American in a U.S. Open semifinal – will that trend continue?