NEW YORK, Sept 8 \u2014 Jessica Pegula reached the U.S. Open semifinals for a \u200bthird successive year, coming from a set down to beat Emma Navarro 3-6 6-4 6-3 in an all-American clash on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The 32-year-old \u200cwill face two-time defending champion Aryna Sabalenka in a rematch of the 2024 final after securing her \u2060fifth straight win over her compatriot, \u200bincluding a victory at last month’s \u2060Cincinnati Open.<\/p>\n
The clash, dubbed by American media as the “Battle of the Billionaires” \u200cbecause of their backgrounds, \u200cbegan more than an hour later than scheduled after Frances Tiafoe’s \u2060marathon victory over Alex Michelsen in another \u2060all-American contest.<\/p>\n
The wait did little to help either player find their rhythm, with the match instead marked by errors and few sustained bursts of momentum.<\/p>\n
The 26th seed had the edge in a scrappy opening set as both players struggled to settle. They traded early breaks and each hit \u200cfive double faults, with an extra break allowing \u200bNavarro to move one set ahead.<\/p>\n
The miscues continued in the second, but Pegula found a slight improvement that allowed her to level the match, finishing a long exchange with a fine forehand winner to make it one set apiece.<\/p>\n
Pegula carried that momentum into the decider, where an extra break put her in control before she closed out the victory.<\/p>\n
“It was really \u200btough, really physical, I wasn’t serving my best, I was fighting a lot of \u200cdemons out there,” \u200cPegula said \u2060on court.<\/p>\n
“I do a great job on having a short term memory, I know everytime I come out no matter what I have to tell the negative me to shut up and just play tennis and compete.”<\/p>\n
The victory was \u200calso Pegula’s 50th of the \u200bseason, making her the first player on \u200cthe women’s tour to \u2060reach that mark \u200bin 2026.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Janina Nuno Rios in New York; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus and \u200bMichael Perry)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK, Sept 8 \u2014 Jessica Pegula reached the U.S. Open semifinals for a \u200bthird successive year, coming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2879,2878,2881,1796,2880,53,54,2883,2884,50,2882,28,2877,2885,2369],"class_list":["post-69259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-cars","tag-classifieds","tag-homes","tag-international","tag-jobs","tag-local","tag-news","tag-radio","tag-salt-lake","tag-sports","tag-television","tag-tennis","tag-traffic","tag-utah","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}