Sabalenka Advances as Townsend's Challenge Falls Short at US Open
Aryna Sabalenka walked into Arthur Ashe Stadium chasing history and walked out with it firmly in her sights.
The two-time defending champion survived a wild, jagged contest to beat American Taylor Townsend 6-4 6-3 and reach a sixth consecutive US Open quarter-final, matching a run last achieved by Serena Williams in 2016. It was Sabalenka’s 18th straight win in New York, a three-year streak that now brushes up against Williams’ shadow in more ways than one.
Three more wins, and she joins Serena as the last woman to claim three US Open titles in a row.
A chaotic start, a ruthless finish
This was no procession. For 75 minutes, it was a scrap.
The match opened with five consecutive breaks of serve, both players ripping returns and treating the baseline as a launching pad rather than a safe space. Sabalenka, the top seed, looked edgy. Townsend, dressed in a long, black-feathered outfit that screamed theatre, played like a woman determined to turn the night into her own show.
Sabalenka eventually steadied first, landing heavier first serves, taking the ball earlier, forcing Townsend to defend more than attack. She served out the opening set at the second time of asking, but nothing about it felt secure.
The American kept coming. A doubles specialist by trade but a natural-born shotmaker, Townsend mixed spins, angles and net rushes to break early in the second set and move 3-1 ahead. The crowd, unsurprisingly, roared for the underdog.
Sabalenka heard them. Then shut them out.
“I was just trying to stay focused on myself, not only point by point but ball by ball,” she said. “I’m happy I was able to turn around the second set, I think it was a key moment.”
From 1-3 down, she broke back to love. That game flipped the entire night. The tension that had hung over her shoulders suddenly drained; the swings grew freer, the targets bigger. Sabalenka won five games in a row, dropping only five points in that stretch, to slam the door on Townsend’s upset bid.
The scoreline, 6-4 6-3, looked tidy. The match was anything but.
Composure where she once lost it
What will please Sabalenka most is not the numbers – six straight quarter-finals here, 18 wins in a row at the US Open, a flawless semi-final record in New York since 2020 – but the way she held herself when the night turned hostile.
She has not always managed that. The four-time major winner has lived through enough meltdowns on big courts to know how quickly a match like this can spiral: a partisan crowd, a fearless opponent, a scrappy start. This time, she rode it out.
With her world No 1 ranking under threat and the knowledge she likely needs the title to keep it, the stakes were clear. So was the response.
Sabalenka tightened her patterns, picked on Townsend’s second serve, and used her own weight of shot to bully the American out of the middle of the court. The errors that once flew off her racquet in clusters came instead in isolated bursts. The roar after the final point was more relief than celebration.
She still found room to acknowledge the woman across the net.
“What an incredible player she is, approaching the net, a great returner, moving well, very brave,” Sabalenka said of Townsend. “You can see how focused she was. It was really challenging playing her, especially here.
“Thank you so much [to the crowd] for being so respectful to me. I knew coming into this match that you guys would be on her side, but you were sometimes cheering for me and I really appreciate that.”
Noskova survives a rollercoaster
Waiting next is Wimbledon champion Linda Noskova, the Czech sixth seed who needed six match points and every ounce of nerve to subdue Marta Kostyuk 7-5 5-7 6-4 in a draining, two-and-a-half-hour duel.
Noskova’s evening mirrored Sabalenka’s in one sense: control, chaos, then escape.
The 21-year-old served for the match in the second set and held two match points at 5-3, only for Kostyuk to claw her way back and steal the set 7-5. Noskova’s shoulders sagged; her expression told the story of a player trying to restart a match she had already half-won.
“The match was so tough, emotionally a bit more than physically,” she admitted. “Today was very close, it could have ended both ways. With all the chances I had in the second set, it was tough to still kind of restart.”
She did restart, but not cleanly. The final set became a nerve test. Breaks were traded, momentum tossed back and forth. Noskova again moved ahead 5-3, again carved out match points, again saw them slip away as errors crept in and Kostyuk refused to fold.
At deuce, after saving a break point and squandering a fifth match point, Noskova finally forced one last error and dropped to the court, the release immediate and raw. An hour had passed between her first and sixth chance to finish it. She used the last.
History on the line
Sabalenka now stands three wins from a slice of US Open history and from salvaging a season that, by her standards, has wobbled. A fourth-round exit at Wimbledon still stings. A year without a major title would feel like a step back from the heights she has set since 2022.
Yet in New York, she looks at home. The hard courts here have become her territory, her run of semi-finals stretching back to 2020 a testament to a game built for this surface and a mentality increasingly hardened by scars.
Noskova, a Grand Slam champion already at 21, brings her own threat and a fresh set of questions. Sabalenka brings the weight of expectation, the Serena comparisons, and a streak that refuses to break.
Something has to give.
