Emma Navarro reversed momentum by winning the last six games to defeat Spain’s Paula Badosa 6-2, 7-5 and reach her first Grand Slam semifinal at the U.S. Open on Tuesday in New York.
Navarro’s next test will be a showdown with No. 2 seed Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus, who defeated No. 7 seed and Olympic gold medalist Zheng Qinwen 6-1, 6-2 in the nightcap.
The 13th-seeded Navarro, who had upset defending champion and third-seeded Coco Gauff to advance to the quarterfinals, took the first set on Tuesday only to see 26th-seeded Badosa stake a 5-1 advantage in the second set at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
“After I got it back to 5-2, I had a little bit of inkling that it might be two sets,” Navarro said in her on-court interview after the match. “I just wanted to stay really tough and stick in there. I can’t see the future, but maybe today I could a little bit. Even if I did lose the second set, I wanted to set the tone for the third set.”
Navarro, 23, broke Badosa using a variety of slices, volleys and angles to close to 5-3. Badosa twice double-faulted when serving at 5-4.
After winning 12 of 14 points to even the set at 5-5, Navarro won every point on serve to go up 6-5.
A former NCAA champion at Virginia who was born in New York, Navarro used her forehand drop shot effectively to score winners, including the first point and match point.
She had won the first set in 29 minutes with the help of six winners (to five for Badosa) and putting 69 percent of her first serves in play. Badosa, a former World No. 2, had 16 unforced errors.
By the end of the match lasting one hour and 12 minutes, Navarro converted 5 of her 8 break points, to 2 of 6 for Badosa, and 59 percent of points on her second serve, to 26 percent for her opponent.
“I never had the momentum in this match,” said Badosa, who was trying to reach her first Grand Slam semifinal and had won 24 of her last 30 matches. “I played four or five games OK. It was 5-1, but I never felt myself on the court.
“I lost, I don’t know, 20 points almost in a row,” she said. “It’s very weird for me because I’m quite a consistent player, so I wasn’t expecting that, either.”
Navarro, who was ranked No. 61 in the world last September, is guaranteed a top-10 debut next week. She captured her first WTA Tour title in January in Hobart, Australia, and made her first major quarterfinal at Wimbledon.
Badosa was 1-0 in her career against Navarro, a 1-6, 6-4, 6-2 victory in the first round at Rome in May.
Six women’s singles players in the last 40 years have reached the U.S. Open semifinals without a previous win in the main draw: Navarro, Steffi Graf (1985), Venus Williams (1997), Yanina Wickmayer (2009), Bianca Andreescu (2019) and Emma Raducanu (2021).
Meanwhile, Sabalenka controlled all aspects of her quarterfinal match. She converted 4 of 8 chances to break Zheng’s serve while saving the only break point she faced. When Zheng was forced to her second serve, Sabalenka won 16 of 24 second-return points (66.7 percent). She finished with 16 winners to Zheng’s nine.
Sabalenka knew she will not be the crowd favorite in her semifinal against Navarro.
“Drinks on me tonight?” she told the crowd in her post-match interview, a grin on her face. “Drinks on me, and please give me some support in the next match.”
The two-time Australian Open winner reached the final in New York last year, where she fell to American Coco Gauff.
–Field Level Media
