No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka surrendered just three games to her opponent Qinwen Zheng on Tuesday night in reaching the US Open semifinals for a second straight year.
The quarterfinal meeting between Sabalenka and No. 7 Zheng — a rematch of January’s Australian Open final — was the first matchup between players ranked in the top 10 on the women’s side at this year’s US Open.
With her 6-1, 6-2 victory, Sabalenka improved to 9-1 in major quarterfinals, the second-best win percentage among women since the Open era began in 1968 (min. 10 matches). Her nine major semifinal appearances since the start of 2021 lead all women’s players over that span.
The three games won by Zheng were her fewest in a Grand Slam match.
Sabalenka, who came out on top in Melbourne and was last year’s runner-up at Flushing Meadows, is trying to become the fifth different woman to win the Australian Open and US Open in the same year since 1988, when the Aussie Open became a hardcourt event.
She would join Steffi Graf (1988, 1989), Monica Seles (1991, 1992), Martina Hingis (1997) and Angelique Kerber (2016).
ESPN Stats & Information contributed to this report.
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