Coco Gauff needed just two words when the scale of it all hit her.
“Oh, wow.”
On a humid New York night, that felt about right. For the first time since 1975, the US Open women’s semi-finals will feature the top four seeds. No upstart interloper, no shock quarter-finalist riding a hot week. Just Aryna Sabalenka, Elena Rybakina, Jessica Pegula and Gauff, the four pillars of the current game, all surviving three-set battles to stand where the sport once expected its stars to be.
It has taken 51 years for the draw to look this clean again. It hasn’t felt this loaded in a long time.
Former British number one Annabel Croft summed up the mood, speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live: “How amazing – it doesn't get much better than that does it? It has felt fantastic the whole tournament – I just feel like I've been more enthused about looking forward to the match-ups this Grand Slam than any I can remember.”
She’s not alone. For a decade, the women’s tour has been defined by volatility. Since the start of 2020, 13 different women have won Grand Slam singles titles. On the men’s side, the number is seven. The chaos has been entertaining, but it has also meant that long-running rivalries have struggled to take root.
Now, for at least one fortnight, order has returned. And with it, something else: a sense of a proper, heavyweight showdown.
A semi-final line-up with history – and edge
This is the first time at any major since Wimbledon 2009 that the top four ranked players have all reached the semi-finals. Back then it felt like the norm. Today, it feels like a statement.
Croft can feel the shift: “I just feel like there's lots of really big names now, big personalities going up against each other and it's really exciting. We've been blessed with the amount of intriguing matches we've had. You're seeing these warriors out on court.”
Warriors is the right word for this quartet. All four have been dragged to three sets this fortnight. None blinked.
Top seed and two-time defending champion Sabalenka opens Thursday’s semi-final programme against Pegula (00:00 BST, Friday), before Rybakina – the woman who will take over as world number one on Monday – faces Gauff in the second match on Arthur Ashe Stadium.
The stakes are layered everywhere you look. Sabalenka is chasing a slice of Serena Williams territory, trying to become the first woman since 2014 to win three straight US Open titles. Pegula, the only player left in the draw without a major, is fighting a different kind of history – her own.
Sabalenka vs Pegula: a rivalry with scars
They know each other too well for this to feel like just another semi-final.
Sabalenka and Pegula have met 13 times. The scars of the last two US Opens are fresh. In 2023, Sabalenka denied Pegula a first Slam title in the final. Last year, Pegula stood a set away from turning the tide in their rivalry in the semi-finals, only for Sabalenka to claw her way back again.
Pegula doesn’t shy away from the word that now follows them around.
“It's fun to look at it like a rivalry. I think that's what motivates me,” she said. “I know that she's definitely pushed me to become a better player, so I always respect and appreciate that aspect of our rivalry.”
She has beaten Sabalenka four times on the WTA Tour. She has never done it at a Grand Slam. That’s the wall she keeps running into, and she knows it.
Beating a four-time major winner on the sport’s biggest stages, she admitted, is a “hurdle” she still has to clear.
Sabalenka, for her part, sounds like a player who relishes the collision.
She described herself as “super excited” to face Pegula again, and it’s not hard to see why. “I'm loving playing against her because it's a battle, because it's a fight, and I love being under pressure and going through tough challenges,” said the Belarusian, who is into her first semi-final since losing to Pegula at the Berlin Open in June.
Pegula arrived in New York with the better recent results – finals in both Washington and Cincinnati – but Sabalenka owns this court, this stage, this fortnight. Pegula knows it.
“I know she hasn't maybe had the best results this summer, but I know that she has a lot of confidence playing here at this tournament, and she's going for a three-peat,” Pegula said.
One of them walks away with a place in the final. The other walks away with a story of what might have been – again.
Rybakina’s new number, Gauff’s new mindset
By reaching the semi-finals, Rybakina has already reshaped the rankings. On Monday, she will end Sabalenka’s 99-week stay at the top and become the new world number one.
She has been careful not to get carried away. To her, the top spot is “just a number.” The real prize sits at the end of the week: a third Grand Slam title, and the right to say she arrived at number one with a trophy in her hands, not a defeat in her legs.
As BBC Radio 5 Live tennis correspondent Russell Fuller put it: “It's never quite the same if you become world number one having lost a Grand Slam final or semi-final just beforehand, so she will be trying to cap off an absolutely perfect couple of weeks by winning the title.”
Standing between her and that perfect fortnight is Gauff, backed by a partisan Arthur Ashe crowd that has already seen her lift this trophy once.
The 22-year-old American won the US Open in 2023, then suffered back-to-back fourth-round exits in the following two years. That kind of whiplash changes a player. Gauff says it has changed her outlook.
“Sometimes you're just so focused on the now, now, now, because you want it now, and obviously you want to take advantage of your opportunities,” she said. “In the grand scheme of things, [I'm] definitely sitting here in a different mindset and perspective than I was last year.
“It inspires me a little bit more to keep working, as I see how much I have improved in a year.”
Her record against Rybakina gives her something to hold on to. Gauff leads their head-to-head 2-1. But the last word belongs to the Kazakh, who came from a set down to beat her in the Canadian Open semi-finals last month.
That match is a warning. This one will be a test of nerve as much as game.
Gauff knows what’s coming.
“I'm going to have some aces hit on me and some winners hit on me, but I'm going to keep fighting and give it my all. That's all I can do,” she said.
On one side of the draw, a three-peat and a long-awaited breakthrough are on the line. On the other, a new number one and a homegrown star trying to turn perspective into power.
For a sport that has spent years searching for its next defining rivalries, this semi-final line-up offers something rare: four women at the peak of their powers, all exactly where they were supposed to be.
Now they have to prove they deserve to stay there.
