Aryna Sabalenka cruises past Jessica Pegula and into the U.S. Open final

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NEW YORK — Aryna Sabalenka is headed back to the U.S. Open final.

After beating Jessica Pegula 7-5, 6-2 on a dank, heavy night in Arthur Ashe Stadium, Sabalenka is one win away from her third consecutive title in New York. A showdown with Elena Rybakina, who will replace Sabalenka at the top of women’s tennis Monday, awaits.

That would be a remarkable achievement. The U.S. Open is the hardest Grand Slam to defend. It comes toward the end of the season, when top players can be banged up or burned out and ripe for the taking.

Sabalenka’s achievement would be even more stunning given her sub-par form of the past four months. She was nearly unbeatable in the first quarter of the year, but she has been eminently beatable since April. Often, she has beaten herself in big spots as much as she has let others beat her.

That vulnerable version of Sabalenka has largely disappeared since she landed in New York for her last shot at a Grand Slam title this year. That’s the same position she was in a year ago, but that was after a year of losing mostly in finals.

“I feel confident and I feel mentally and physically really strong right now,” Sabakenka said in a news conference after the win.

What a difference a week and six wins can make. Sabalenka was edgy and combative a week ago. After playing a liquid version of herself Thursday night in her favorite stadium in the world — she named her cavalier King Charles spaniel Ash — Sabalenka is basking in her annual joy of being in New York.

“I just love New York and I love being here, and I love the energy of the city,” she said. “I think that’s what drives me. That’s what really inspires me and pushes me to keep going.”

Rising this year seemed like a far-fetched concept for the world No. 1, who will no longer hold that position next week regardless of whether she wins Saturday’s final. She has said that’s just fine. Getting her hands back on this trophy is all she cares about.

That’s how she played Thursday night, in front of a packed house of 24,000 people who were largely desperate to rally behind one of their hometown favorites.

Sabalenka barely gave them or Pegula a chance. The world No. 3 earned just one chance to break Sabalenka’s serve in the first set, and Sabalenka snuffed it out quickly, with a big serve and a bigger forehand.

Pegula kept going, trying to use her flat power down the middle of the court. She was trying to get Sabalenka to miss, cutting off the angles that the defending champion uses to run her opponents out of matches.

This was so different from their last meeting in Berlin, when Pegula cruised through the set, delivering a rare 6-0 bagel to Sabalenka.

That was on grass, where Pegula’s flat balls stay low and Sabalenka, who is six feet tall, can struggle to get down and get her topspin-heavy forehand under the ball.

Sabalenka is never happier than when she is playing on hard court, especially this hard court

“Fast courts, but also bouncy a little bit,” she said. “That really gives me more possibilities of, like, pushing her back.”

She did plenty of that.

The first set was about as clean as it gets. Lots of hard, quick rallies. Eleven consecutive holds of serve. A few fraught moments from Sabalenka, when she missed in the net or when Pegula had the temerity to hit a winner.

Then Pegula stepped up to the line at 5-6. Sabalenka’s power drew two errors. Amid the pressure Pegula double-faulted. On her second set point chance, Sabalenka attacked hard down the middle. Pegula went into the net, and Sabalenka was halfway to the final.

The second half of the journey was even cleaner, and with a calm pump of her fist, Sabalenka celebrated the opportunity to three-peat in the tennis city she loves like no other.

After the match, Pegula said she and her team were joking with Sabalenka’s.

“We’re like, ‘Do you like us?’ Like, we’re good people, we’re pretty nice to you guys. Do you think that maybe one day she could be maybe off a little bit, so I could just, like, get a chance?”

Pegula had the both the satisfaction and struggle of having gone up against an opponent who had essentially given her nothing to work with.

Sabalenka didn’t serve brilliantly, landing 55 percent of her first serves. But it didn’t matter, because she got so many nasty, twisting second serves in that she won two-thirds of the points off them.

The performance had Pegula, the world No. 3 and a near banker this summer to go deep in tournaments — she is 22-5 since losing in the first round of the French Open — talking herself down, despite her recent success against Sabalenka.

Once Sabalenka had gotten into a groove on Pegula’s flat, hard pace, the Americajn she felt like she had no escape routes.

“I’m not quite a Rybakina where I can serve myself out of trouble, and I’m not quite a Coco that can rely on insane athleticism,” she said of Sabalenka’s two possible opponents at the time she was speaking.

“I do think the way she played tonight, I think she would have beaten anybody.”

Now the question is whether she can do it for one more night. She has essentially owned the hard-court Slams the past four years. This is her fourth consecutive U.S. Open final. She has already won two. She made her fourth consecutive Australian Open final in January. She has won two of those as well.

The third has been elusive in Australia, where she has lost two consecutive finals. New York, she believes, can be different.

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