New York | Paolini and Pegula advance to Last 16

Saturday saw the US Open wrap up the women’s 3rd round, with Jasmine Paolini and Jessica Pegula, the No 5 and 6 seeds, both advancing during the day sessions on the main show courts, while there were also wins for Diane Shnaider, Liudmila Samsonova, Karolina Muchova and Caroline Wozniacki.

I thought it was pretty straight-forward today. I think I just played some solid tennis. Didn’t have to do too much or anything crazy out there. I felt like I was able to execute my strategy and figure things out and get it done pretty quickly. Jessica Pegula

Paolini opened play on Louis Armstrong Stadium, notching up a convincing 6-3 6-4 win over No 30 seed Yulia Putintseva from Kazakhstan, putting the Italian into the 4th round of the 2024 US Open for the first time in her career.

Having played just 3 points in the 2nd-round, advancing when an unfortunate ankle injury forced Czech Karolina Pliskova to retire, Paolini kept her court time to just 93 minutes on Saturday afternoon.

The win makes her the first Italian to reach the round of 16 at all Grand Slam events in a single year, having reached the 4th round at the Australian Open and the finals at both Roland Garros and Wimbledon this year.

“This year started well, I have to say. Then I started to believe more in myself and believe I could play well in the Slams, because before this I never passed the first two rounds,” she said with a smile after her match. “I really enjoyed playing here, in front of this crowd in a big stadium.”

Against Putintseva, the diminutive Italian was a force to be reckoned with, covering every inch of the court with her signature foot speed, while her aggressive groundstrokes packed a punch that kept the Kazakh on the defensive.

“Today I think I was pretty solid with being calm,” Paolini said post-match. “I just tried to play my game. She’s an unbelievable player, she defends very well.”

The Italian took a 3-1 lead, and tensions rose as they traded 4 consecutive breaks of serve, but Paolini held steady in the 9th to convert on her first set point and close it out.

A single early break of serve in the second gave Paolini a 2-1 edge, an advantage she held the rest of the way despite a solid attacking game from the former 2020 US Open quarter-finalist Putintseva.

Paolini finished the match with 22 winners, and won nearly half of her return points at 48%.

Until this year, Paolini had never got past the second round of a major, but as she continues her campaign at the US Open, she will next face Karolina Muchova in the Last 16.

While the Italian has not beaten Muchova, ranked 52, in 3 previous meetings, all three came long before Paolini’s meteoric rise in the rankings, in 2018 and 2021.

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On the heels of her convincing win over Naomi Osaka, Muchova took another positive step forward on her road to recovery from serious wrist injury, soundly beating Anastasia Potapova from Russia, 6-4 6-2, to arrive in round 4.

The former World No 8, who last year was a semi-finalist at the US Open and a finalist at Roland Garros, was sidelined for 9 months enduring surgery on her right-wrist tendon.

According to ranking, this was an upset, since Potapova is at No 38, and Muchova has fallen out of the Top 50, but the Czech proved vastly more accomplished of the two, showing off her versatile, all-court game, by frequently venturing forward to knock off volleys and keep Potapova guessing.

In a match that began in a light drizzle, Muchova rained down winners, and served-and-volleyed on 3 successive points, eventually arriving at set point when she hit a spectacular outstretched backhand stab volley while doing the splits for a winner.

In the second set, Muchova kept up the pressure on Potapova, who began to press and misfire, ultimately finishing with 29 unforced errors.

The Czech broke early and strolled to a commanding 5-1 lead, serving out the match to love in inimitable style with a sliced, short forehand winner.

Muchova is back where she belongs, playing top-level tennis, and back into the 4th round at a major, holding a winning percentage of 69% (65-29) at majors and WTA 1000 events since the start of 2020.

Jessica Pegula had little trouble with Jessica Bouzas Maneiro and advanced the round of 16 with ease on Day 6 of the US Open

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Jessica Pegula opened on Arthur Ashe Stadium with an impressive 6-3 6-3 win over Spain’s Jessica Bouzas Maneiro.

“I thought it was pretty straight-forward today,” the American No 1 said afterwards. “I think I just played some solid tennis. Didn’t have to do too much or anything crazy out there.”

The two Jessicas faced off on a cloudy day, and the young Spaniard had no answers for the World No 6, who produced an 89% first-serve win success rate, significantly higher than Bouzas Maneiro’s 51%.

While the contest started off evenly, Pegula broke away in the 7th game to escape the deadlock at 3-3, and quickly found her groove, not giving up another game to wrap up the first set, losing just 2 points on her serve.

Bouzas Maneiro opened the second set with renewed vigour, staying with Pegula for the first 6 games, which was long enough to pose a threat, but again she couldn’t hang on as the 6th seed leaned into her momentum and nabbed the match in a brisk 70 minutes.

“I felt like I was able to execute my strategy and figure things out and get it done pretty quickly,” said Pegula on court after the match.

Pegula has reached the quarter-finals at Grand Slams 6 times, including one Last 8 appearance at the US Open, back in 2022.

Up next for Pegula will be Diana Shnaider, the 20 year-old Russian who is seeded 18, and is in the midst of a season that has seen her beat Coco Gauff, and is playing in her first US Open main draw.

The two have met once before, in a semi-final matchup in Toronto a few weeks ago, which Pegula won in straight sets en route to the title.

“She’s been super match-tough this year. Had a lot of good wins,” Pegula said of Shnaider. “[In the next round] I’m just going to try and use what I did well the last match and hopefully it works, but I think I’m going to have to be ready as well for her to kind of adapt and maybe change a few things from the last time we played.”

A possible peek into the quarter-finals, though, lies in a bigger challenge awaiting the winner in either World No 1 Iga Swiatek, who won her late night match against Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, 6-4 6-2, or Liudmila Samsonova, 6-1 6-1 winner over American Ashlyn Krueger.

Diana Shnaider had too much firepower for Sara Errani and advances to the Last 16 on her main draw debut at Flushing Meadows

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Diana Shnaider used her firepower to outpace Sara Errani in the second match of Day 5 on Armstrong, steamrolling the veteran Italian, 6-2 6-2, in a routine 3rd-round encounter.

“It was a great match. I’m really proud of myself and the effort I put in today and [throughout] the year,” Shnaider, the 18th-seeded Russian said on court following the match. “It’s very special to be in the second week of a Grand Slam in the U.S.”

The contest pitted Shnaider’s controlled aggression against the tireless retrieving game of the Italian, a former World No 5, now ranked at 96.

Errani, who at 37 is nearly twice the age of her 20-year-old opponent, struggled to keep up with the big-swinging lefty, who closed out the match in just over an hour, belting 31 winners, 21 from the forehand side, in the process.

Caroline Wozniacki cruised past qualifier Jessika Ponchet on the Grandstand on Saturday afternoon

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Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki routed French qualifier Jessika Ponchet to make the 4th-round, 6-3 6-2, to match her 2023 run at the US Open.

“I’m really happy to be through today,” Wozniacki said. “She was playing unorthodox tennis. It was a little hard to read her game.”

On paper, the experience gap between the two players was glaring, as Wozniacki had twice been a US Open runner-up and held the World No 1 ranking for 71 weeks, while Ponchet had lost in the 1st-round of qualifying 5 times, but came back this year to earn her first spot in the main draw, reaching the third round by defeating Zheng Saisai of China in her opener, and by walkover when the No 4 seed and 2022 Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina withdrew from their second-round match.