The opening four rounds over the last week has gone down to eight and now we have four left after a brilliant last two days of US Open Tennis at Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York. Let’s start with the women’s singles bracket and there’s going to be two of their own players to get behind them in Coco Gauff & Madison Keys.
Gauff had a very easy outing against Jelena Ostapenko from Latvia (0-6, 2-6), while Keys staved off a late threat in the 2nd stage off current Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova (Czech Republic) also following a great start to the match (1-6, 4-6). Their next respective opponents for the last 4 tomorrow will be Karolina Muchkova (Czech Republic) & Aryna Sabalenka (Belarus) where both of these players also fought off so well at the same time against Sorana Cirstea (Romania) by Muchkova (0-6, 3-6) & Qinwen Zheng by Sabalenka (1-6, 4-6).
Over in the men’s, there’s another set of Americans on show in the last 8. Although one has gone through guaranteed where Ben Shelton responded well to Francis Tiafoe’s 2nd set with the win after four sets (2-6, 6-3, 6-7 via 7-9 tie & 2-6), while the other couldn’t get past Novak Djokovic (Serbia) all along in Taylor Fritz (1-6, 4-6, 4-6). Yes, it’s gonna be a tough one for sure for Shelton where he will take on Djokovic, even when he had some hamstring issues during the mixed doubles QF game with Taylor Townsend also earlier today against Jessica Pegula & Austin Krajicek. But if Shelton can get the job done, then he will be the first American to play in a final since Andy Roddick in 2006. That opening semi match-up between Djokovic & Shelton will be in the early hours of Saturday AM AEST time.
And lastly, we will have two US Open champions both from last year & 2021 going head-to-head in the 2nd semi-final also later on Saturday AM between Carlos Alcaraz (Spain) & Daniil Medvedev (Russia). They too got the job done without a lot of hassle to wrap up the last 8 earlier today against their respective opponents Alexander Zverev (Germany – 6-3, 6-2, 6-4 by Alcaraz) & Andrey Rublev (Russia – 6-4, 6-3, 6-4 by Medvedev).
All in all, we saw few straight sets match-ups here & there that saw them punch their ticket to the semis where we will have a new women’s champion, while we had a terrific four-set all American showdown.
Now there are 2-3 Americans hoping to go all the way into the weekend’s main event against one of the elite & best grand slam players out there as they all seek to finish off the grand slam year of 2023 on a huge note. All four key semi-final match-ups will be found out at Arthur Ashe Stadium where the city never sleeps in New York.
