WOMEN’S PREVIEW: CINCY CROWN COMES DOWN TO SABALENKA, PEGULA

The numbers didn’t look good for Aryna Sabalenka. She was 3-8 against top seed Iga Swiatek heading into their semifinal showdown at the Cincinnati Open. Plus, she was 0-3 in semis at the WTA 1000 event, having stalled in the final four in 2018, 2022, and 2023.

Credit the 5-foot-11 baseliner with ignoring the math. Sabalenka stood tall against Swiatek, winning 6-3, 6-3, to narrow the head-to-head gap and finally break through to the title match. Afterward, she would call her performance “brilliant.”

“It just shows that, no matter what happened in the past, you can always change things. You don’t have to focus on the past,” said the 26-year-old Sabalenka, whose power game seems a perfect match for the ultra-fast hard courts of the Lindner Family Tennis Center. “That’s really good that I was able to kind of break the wall in this tournament. I’m happy to be in the final, but this is not the goal. I just want to focus on the next one.”

The next one is a winner-take-all matchup with zoning American Jessica Pegula.

“We’ve had a lot of great battles in the past,” said Sabalenka, who holds a 4-2 edge in career encounters. “She’s an amazing player and has been doing really well the past couple of weeks. I’m really looking forward to the final.”

Pegula, 30, has flipped the script on her 2024, quickly turning an otherwise lackluster year into a season to remember. She’s now a spotless 9-0 since the Paris Games, having arrived in Cincinnati on the heels of a successful title defense in Toronto. She becomes only the third American in the Open Era to kick off the North American hard-court swing by reaching back-to-back finals in Canada and Cincinnati, joining Hall of Famer Rosie Casals and 23-time major singles titlist Serena Williams.

“What a trio right there,” said Pegula following her rain-delayed 6-2, 3-6, 6-3 dismissal of resurgent Spaniard Paula Badosa in the semifinals. “I did not think I would be in a group with those names.”

Sabalenka, who will return to No. 2 in the PIF WTA Rankings after Cincinnati, overtaking American Coco Gauff, presents a similar challenge to Badosa: The two-time Australian Open champion is a power player who can bring the heat with her ground game and also from the service stripe.

“Paula, she was hitting harder than, honestly, anyone I’ve ever played,” said the sixth seed Pegula. “The sound that was coming off her racquet was insane. I don’t think anyone can hit as hard as Paula was today. I’ll kind of take what I can from this match and try to use that going into tomorrow.”

“Aryna’s obviously an amazing hard-court player,” she added. “I think she plays well with her serve and first-strike tennis on these fast hard courts. But I think I’m good on these fast hard courts as well. I think I can give her some trouble. It will be a super-good test for me to go up against the world No. 3. I’m just going to do my best.”

Ironically, their first-ever meeting came at this same tournament in 2020, though it was played in Flushing Meadows due to COVID-19 restrictions. Pegula claimed that Round of 16 contest in three sets, 6-2, 2-6, 6-3.