Within the first all-American fourth spherical match on the Australian Open in six years, Jessica Pegula ended Madison Keys’ title protection on Monday with a 6-3, 6-4 win.
Australian Open: Scores | Attracts | Order of play
One thing needed to give within the fourth head-to-head assembly between the 2 Billie Jean King Cup teammates, good associates, and The Participant’s Field podcast co-hosts. Keys, who received a long-awaited first Grand Slam singles title in Melbourne final 12 months, improved her unbeaten streak to 10 in a row with three wins this 12 months, whereas Pegula entered the match 3-0 in Spherical of 16 matches on the event.
In 1 hour and 18 minutes, the No. 6 seed superior, and improved to 8-2 in Grand Slam fourth-round matches general. The 2024 US Open finalist did it by breaking Keys’ serve 4 occasions, and blunting the No. 9 seed’s major weapons. She returned greater than 70% of Keys’ serves within the match, and made simply 13 unforced errors towards 14 winners. That, coupled with 28 unforced errors by Keys, helped Pegula dash out to a 6-3, 4-1 lead that she by no means relinquished.
“I have been enjoying rather well, seeing the ball rather well, hitting the ball rather well this complete event, and I needed to remain true to that and lean on a few issues that I felt like she would do,” Pegula mentioned afterwards in her on-court interview.
“I felt like I got here out doing it fairly effectively and bought a few fast factors for her early on. After I had that lead, I attempted to stay with that lead as a lot as I may … and tried to concentrate on what I wanted to do and the patterns to look out for.
“Within the first set, she performed a few actually good video games, and I needed to concentrate on the place I used to be serving, be good, take some danger on a few second serves, change up the tempo as a lot as I may. … I needed to actually belief that I used to be capable of change speeds and hit my spots on my serves. Within the second set, I could not see something into the solar, and I used to be like, ‘No matter.’ I bought damaged [at 4-1] … so I attempted to not get too upset at that one.”
The win not solely continued Pegula’s profession success on the Australian Open, but in addition towards fellow Individuals. Since a loss to Keys within the Spherical of 16 on the 2023 US Open, Pegula is 28-3 towards her compatriots — and that file is 13-1 within the final 52 weeks.
There may be the potential for that run to proceed. Within the final eight, Pegula will face No. 4 seed Amanda Anisimova, who defeated China’s Wang Xinyu afterward Monday in Melbourne 7-6(4), 6-4. Anisimova has now reached the quarterfinals or higher in any respect 4 Grand Slams in her profession, however will take an 0-3 file into her match towards Pegula.
Wang had beforehand upset each No. 24 seed Jelena Ostapenko and No. 13 seed Linda Noskova earlier within the event, however could not make it a hat trick of seeded wins towards a decided Anisimova. The primary 12 video games of the match went with serve earlier than the two-time main finalist discovered a spark within the tiebreak to win 4 of the final 5 factors — hitting three winners in that span.
Anisimova was damaged simply as soon as within the 1 hour and 42-minute victory, and it got here in her first service recreation of the second set after she herself broke Wang on her fourth break level probability. Nevertheless, she broke once more to steer 2-1, and Wang by no means once more pulled stage. She misplaced simply two factors in her remaining 4 service video games.
