Elena Rybakina needed 66 minutes on Louis Armstrong Stadium to end Naomi Osaka’s best Grand Slam run in five years, beating the two-time US Open champion 6-1 6-4 to reach the quarter-finals in New York for the first time and move within a single win of the world number one ranking.
The second seed struck 29 winners to Osaka’s nine, served seven aces, held all nine of her service games and faced only one break point, which she saved. She won 87% of the points behind her first serve and hit one double fault to Osaka’s five. It was a performance of near-total control against an opponent who has won four major titles, and it took Rybakina into the last eight at Flushing Meadows at the eighth attempt.
Ruthless from the first ball
Rybakina broke in the opening game and did not let go. The first set lasted 24 minutes, Osaka managing to hold once as the Kazakh’s returns landed flat and deep off both wings. Osaka steadied at the start of the second, forcing Rybakina to defend a break point in the third game, but the reprieve was brief. Rybakina broke for 4-3 with a backhand return winner and served out to love.
Osaka, seeded 13th, had arrived in the fourth round in encouraging form after wins over Anastasia Zakharova, Katerina Siniakova and Elise Mertens — her first appearance in the last 16 of a major since 2021. She reported leg pain afterwards, but the more telling number is her record against top-10 opponents this season: now 1-8. The gap between beating the players ranked outside the elite and beating the ones inside it has been the defining problem of her comeback.
Her last Grand Slam title came at the 2026 Australian Open’s predecessor five years ago in Melbourne, in January 2021, and she has been candid about how she frames what is left. “If I win another Grand Slam, it’s not going to change my life,” she said earlier in the fortnight — a line that reads less like resignation than recalibration from a player who once carried the sport’s commercial weight.
One match from the summit
Rybakina has been ranked number two since March, and the arithmetic in New York is now blunt: win the quarter-final and she becomes world number one for the first time, regardless of what Aryna Sabalenka does with the rest of the draw. Sabalenka, who has held top spot since October 2024, must defend her title to keep it.
That would complete a climb built over four seasons rather than one surge. The list behind it:
- Wimbledon champion in 2022, winning a major before she had ever reached a Grand Slam quarter-final anywhere else
- WTA Finals champion in Riyadh in November 2025, beating Sabalenka in the final
- 46 match wins in 2026, more than any other season of her career at this stage
- Quarter-finals now reached at all four Grand Slam events
She has also not dropped a set in four matches here, which matters in a tournament where the physical bill usually comes due in week two. Rybakina’s game — big first serve, low margins, minimal rally length — is designed to keep that bill small.
Zheng stands in the way
The quarter-final is against Zheng Qinwen, and there is nothing routine about it. The Olympic champion came through qualifying in New York and is the first qualifier to reach the last eight at Flushing Meadows since Emma Raducanu won the title in 2021. She has done it by refusing to lose matches she had already lost: 5-0 down in the third set to Madison Keys, she won the last seven games to take it 1-6 7-6(3) 7-5; two days later she trailed Iga Swiatek 5-0 in the first set and won 7-5 6-3.
Rybakina leads their tour-level meetings, and she has beaten Osaka twice from two, including a three-set Toronto quarter-final. But Zheng’s run has been powered by exactly the quality Rybakina’s game is least designed to absorb: a willingness to extend rallies until the opponent’s margins fail. Elsewhere in the draw, Coco Gauff is back in the quarter-finals for the first time since her 2023 title.
For Rybakina, the framing is unusually clean. She has spent her career being described as the most dangerous player never to have topped the rankings — the Wimbledon champion who was denied ranking points for it, the flat-hitter who wins big titles between long quiet spells. One more win in New York settles that, and does it against a player who has spent a week proving she does not need to be ahead to win.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
769 articles published
