Jessica Pegula is back in the quarterfinals at the U.S. Open after winning 6-4, 6-2 against Diana Shnaider on Monday. This is Pegula’s seventh time reaching the quarterfinals in a Grand Slam tournament. Now, she faces a tough challenge: Pegula has lost all six of her previous major quarterfinal matches, and this one is against No. 1 Iga Swiatek.
Pegula, who is seeded No. 6 and is from the U.S., is having a strong run recently, winning 13 of her last 14 matches, all on hard courts. This includes her second consecutive win in Canada and a final appearance at the Cincinnati Open, where she lost to No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka.
“I feel like there’s been more pressure this year, because I did so well coming into this tournament,” said Pegula, who is 30 years old and the oldest woman left in the competition. “I want to keep working my way and hopefully bringing my best tennis for the later rounds this time.”
Swiatek, who was tied 4-4 with No. 16 Liudmila Samsonova on Monday night, won the next seven games to finish with a 6-4, 6-1 win. Swiatek defeated Pegula in the quarterfinals when she won the 2022 U.S. Open, one of her five Grand Slam titles.
“She’s in a good rhythm right now, and she won so many matches in the past weeks,” Swiatek said about Pegula, “that, for sure, it’s going to be a challenge.”
Half of Pegula’s six quarterfinal losses at Grand Slams have been against a No. 1 player — twice against Swiatek and once against Ash Barty.
“I’ll just try to draw from those experiences and kind of how I felt going into the next match, but it’s just so tough,” Pegula said. “I mean, I know you don’t want the cliche answer, but it’s just kind of one match at a time, and every day kind of feels different.
It depends on who you are playing, how the conditions are, when you’re playing. There are so many variables day to day.”
Karolina Muchova is back in the quarterfinals after winning 6-3, 6-3 against No. 5 Jasmine Paolini, who was the runner-up at the French Open and Wimbledon this year.
Muchova will next play No. 22 Beatriz Haddad Maia, who won against 2018 Australian Open champion Caroline Wozniacki 6-2, 3-6, 6-3 to become the first Brazilian woman to reach the U.S. Open quarterfinals since Maria Bueno in 1968.
Haddad Maia is a 28-year-old left-handed player who was suspended for 10 months after a doping test failure in 2019. She reached the semifinals at the French Open last year but had not gone past the second round at the U.S. Open until now.
Muchova had a standout 2023, reaching the final in Paris and the semifinals in New York, but then needed surgery on her right wrist in October, which kept her out for 10 months.
“This was my worst and most serious injury, I would say. But, I mean, I love the sport, so in my head, I was like, ’I will do everything I could to (get) better and try.’
And here I am today,” said Muchova, who lost to eventual champion Coco Gauff at the U.S. Open a year ago. “I’m just a really happy kid now.”
Gauff was seeded No. 3 this year and was eliminated on Sunday by No. 13 Emma Navarro.
In the men’s matches on Monday, No. 1 Jannik Sinner defeated No. 14 Tommy Paul 7-6 (3), 7-6 (5), 6-1 at night and will face 2021 champion Daniil Medvedev in the quarterfinals.
No. 5 Medvedev, the only past men’s winner still in the tournament, easily won against Nuno Borges 6-0, 6-1, 6-3. His match was briefly delayed by six minutes, along with other matches at the time, because of a fire alarm in the building where the electronic line-calling system is located.
No. 25 Jack Draper became the first British man to reach the quarterfinals in New York since Andy Murray did it in 2016 before he retired.
Draper, who was out in the fourth round last year, will play in his first Grand Slam quarterfinal after a 6-3, 6-1, 6-2 victory over unseeded Tomas Machac.
“I obviously miss Andy. Shoutout to Andy. What an unbelievable career the guy’s had. Just an icon of the game. I miss him in the change rooms. I miss being next to his stinky shoes and all his stinky clothes,” said Draper.
He will face No. 10 Alex de Minaur, who won 6-0, 3-6, 6-3, 7-5 against Jordan Thompson in an all-Australian match. “Andy’s a legend, and if I have half the career he had, then I’ll be a happy man.”
Everything went well for Pegula against the 18th-seeded Shnaider, a 20-year-old Russian who played one season of college tennis at NC State and won a silver medal in women’s doubles at the Paris Olympics.
Pegula hit 22 winners, served six aces, saved 7 of 9 break points she faced, and broke Shnaider’s serve five times.
“My movement has really improved, which has really helped me stay into a lot of these points and these sets and these games and be super consistent,” Pegula said.
“I’ve been serving pretty well. Even if it’s not working, I’ve been kind of getting myself out of service games by serving smart or serving well in big moments like today where she was returning really well.”
