Howdy y’all and welcome to Tennis Insider! After a sometimes wet, sometimes late and sometimes crazy first week, we’ve gotten our elite eight for the 2026 U.S. Open:
(1) Aryna Sabalenka vs. (6) Linda Nosková
(3) Jessica Pegula vs. (26) Emma Navarro
(5) Mirra Andreeva vs. (4) Coco Gauff
(Q) Zheng Qinwen vs. (2) Elena Rybakina
Lets break down each match!
(1) Aryna Sabalenka vs. (6) Linda Nosková
This is the marquee one on paper: the reigning U.S. Open champion (going for three straight) against the reigning Wimbledon champion, in the quarterfinals. The last time two active major titleholders met this early at Flushing Meadows was Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka back in 2013.
Sabalenka is 2-0 against Nosková, including a straight-sets win at the Indian Wells semis back in March, and she’s never lost a U.S. Open quarterfinal. However, her season has quietly gotten bumpy. She was 26-1 through the first three months of 2026, then lost the Australian Open final to Rybakina and hasn’t been back to a final since Miami. She’s 18-7 since that hot start (still winning plenty) just not steamrolling people the way she once was.
Nosková, meanwhile, is coming off the best fortnight of her career. She won Wimbledon in July at 21 years old (becoming the youngest champion there since Petra Kvitová in 2011) and she’s shown up in New York playing like someone who believes the breakthrough wasn’t a fluke. She needed three sets to get past Marta Kostyuk in the round of 16, converting six of nine break points to close it out. This is her first U.S. Open quarterfinal, and a win would send her to her first hard-court Slam semifinal. Sabalenka’s the heavy favorite by the numbers, but Noskova’s the one player in this group with nothing to lose and a major trophy from two months ago to prove it wasn’t a mirage.
Prediction: Sabalenka in two
(3) Jessica Pegula vs. (22) Emma Navarro
The United States is guaranteed a home semifinalist here, which is nice, but the head-to-head is lopsided: Pegula leads 4-0, including a 7-5, 6-2 win over Navarro just three weeks ago in Cincinnati. Navarro’s actually flipped a narrative of her own to get here after she’d lost her first two matches against Anna Kalinskaya before finally beating her 6-4, 6-2 in the fourth round.
Navarro’s best Slam result remains the 2024 U.S. Open semifinal, a run that included a win over Coco Gauff, and this quarterfinal is really about whether that was a real level or a one-off. Pegula, for her part, is chasing her third straight U.S. Open semifinal and has a somewhat unusual incentive structure this year: she can only take the No. 1 ranking by winning the whole tournament, and even then only if Elena Rybakina doesn’t make the semis. While Navarro finding form is a bit of a storyline, Pegula’s just been steadily, unglamorously effective. The head-to-head and the current form both point the same direction, but Navarro is playing her cleanest tennis of the year right now.
Prediction: Pegula in two
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(5) Mirra Andreeva vs. (4) Coco Gauff
Gauff is 5-0 against Andreeva across three surfaces, and the two most recent meetings (Madrid and Rome in 2025) weren’t particularly close. But a lot has changed since then: Andreeva won Roland Garros in June to become, at 19, the youngest French Open champion since Monica Seles in 1992. She arrived at this U.S. Open never having gotten past the third round here and Flushing Meadows was the one major that hadn’t opened up for her. However, she’s now in her first U.S. Open quarterfinal after grinding past Anastasia Potapova 5-7, 6-4, 6-3, a match she said she won by deciding to stop absorbing and start dictating.
Gauff, for her part, has been the more convincing player of the tournament so far, dropping just one set through four rounds and beating Iva Jovic 6-1, 6-4 to get here. She’s also the one with a Slam trophy from this season too (Roland Garros 2025), so this is genuinely two of the last three French Open champions playing each other in a U.S. Open quarterfinal. The head-to-head says Gauff, the recent form says Gauff, but Andreeva’s game has visibly leveled up since the last time these two played.
Prediction: Gauff in two, but maybe three
(Q) Zheng Qinwen vs. (2) Elena Rybakina
Zheng Qinwen came into this tournament ranked No. 121 after elbow surgery wiped out most of last season, and she had to play qualifying for just the second time in her career to get into the main draw. She’s now on a six-match win streak that includes beating Madison Keys from 5-0 down in the third set, and then beating Iga Świątek (the No. 8 seed and a two-time U.S. Open champion) 7-5, 6-3, rallying from 0-5 down in the opening set to do it. She’s the first qualifier to reach the U.S. Open quarterfinals since Emma Raducanu won the whole thing in 2021, and the first player ever to beat Świątek at a major as a qualifier.
Now she draws Rybakina, who’s won four of their five career meetings and both matches this season, and who arrives having barely broken a sweat against Naomi Osaka (6-1, 6-4 in 66 minutes) in the round before. There’s also a bigger prize sitting on this one: if Rybakina reaches the semifinals, she becomes the new WTA No. 1, full stop, regardless of what anyone else in the draw does. For Zheng, just being here is already a return to relevance. For Rybakina, this match might be the whole ballgame for the rankings race.
Prediction: Rybakina in two
This week in women’s tennis
Self promote but I was really proud to have a question I asked Coco Gauff about Sloane Stephens make the rounds online:
This year, the crowd and influencer scene at the U.S. Open has taken an entire new level of craziness.
I’m hoping conversations start to happen about salvaging tennis media and avoid gutting outlets like tennis.com.
After another fourth round performance at the U.S. Open, Taylor Townsend is hoping to use that momentum to reach new heights.
Aryna Sabalenka’s performance coach Jason Stacy penned this feature about handling pressure.
Yes:
Jessica Pegula opened up about being the player seeking out autographs and advice to now giving it.
Mimi Xu and Nina Vargova are two of the top newcomers to college tennis and will hope to bring Duke back to NCAA title glory.
The University of Virginia is building a legacy on the pro tour with players like Danielle Collins and Emma Navarro finding major success.
Throwback Tuesday:
Tweet of the Week
lol
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Five at The IX: Five questions from me New York
Q. Before the tournament you mentioned you would like to see Zina Garrison get some recognition onsite. Over the weekend Sloane Stephens received an award from the USTA Foundation for her work with her foundation. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on Sloane’s impact on Black tennis specifically and how she’s impacted you. I know you go way back. I’m curious to hear your thoughts exactly, you know, what she’s doing and how, you know, you might want to kind of continue that legacy with your own path.
COCO GAUFF: Yeah, no, Sloane has been an important part I think of just, like you said, Black tennis, but especially specifically in my career. She was probably the closest tennis icon I had around me. We had the same childhood coach, and I was able to be able to watch her practice from up close.
I had my tennis birthday one time, and she came and surprised me at that. I felt like the coolest kid ever to have Sloane Stephens at my birthday party.
Yeah, she’s someone that has always been super nice to me and definitely underrated in a sense of all she’s done. You know, her foundation, she’s been doing it for years, and she’s really hands-on with it, from what I’ve seen. I mean, I’m not working with it, but just from what I’ve seen.
She’s doing a lot of clinics different times of the year in underprivileged areas, and I think that’s something that people don’t really see. I’m glad that USTA kind of recognized her for that, because she’s probably one of the few on tour who are as hands-on with their foundation as she is, and it’s something that kind of inspired me to get on the jump in and start mine.
We’re in really early stages, but I definitely would like to impact as many kids as Sloane has done in the sport of tennis. Yeah, she’s an inspiration for us all, and I’m lucky that I’ve gotten a chance to know her for so long. The grace she’s shown me has been the same from the beginning until now.
Q. Alex, you mentioned how loud it was. I’m curious, a lot of the players kind of discussing, oh, first round of slams bring a lot of nerves, there were a lot of extra eyeballs on you, the atmosphere was pretty intense, especially in the warm-up when they were introducing you. Does that bring extra nerves? Like you mentioned the vibe, what kind of vibe does that bring to you, especially when you are warming up trying to get into the start of the match and then proceeding on?
ALEXANDRA EALA: Well, there were nerves, for sure, and I am not really sure if I can pinpoint where they came from, if it’s from the noise, if it’s from, like you said, the first round of a slam.
But I think with experience, my goal is to tune it out, and I’ve had experience with big crowds, especially in the past year, and I think I’ve been navigating quite well within myself to keep the focus and focus on what I need to pay attention to and points A, B, and C.
In the end when you get into the groove, get into the rhythm, we play tennis. You know, a match is match, I think whether there are so many people or none. I think once the players get into that groove, the effect of external factors lessen a little bit.
Q. It was posted the other day on Amanda’s birthday on her locker with all her memes, kind of known as the Meme Queen. Do you have any greatest-of-all-time tennis memes you’ve seen on Twitter or other social media? What’s your favorite?
JESSICA PEGULA: There’s a lot. Hers are pretty good (smiling). I think [Daniil] Medvedev has got to have some good ones up there. I don’t remember exactly which ones, but he definitely has a lot.
I can’t really think of which ones specifically off the top of my head, but I think any expressive player — I remember the one, actually, I think it was Aryna last year against Leylah where Leylah hit a winner, and the GIF is her just going (demonstrating), like she’s trying to control her emotions as best she can.
I think those moments are really funny when people capture them and get creative with them. I think, what was the one, one recently of Amanda, it was like how I feel when I go to work. I think it’s funny. It creates these really funny viral moments online.
I would definitely say I think Medvedev has got to be kind of my favorite character on court, so I think he has a lot of great ones.
Q. I’m curious, with the week leading up to the Open, there are so many events and everything, it can be kind of physically draining. On top of being the top seed here and among the favorites, how do you balance the energy, especially with the energy that New York brings into your tennis? And then looking over the next two weeks, how do you kind of maintain a steady level with your energy?
ARYNA SABALENKA: What is the question there?
Q. You had so much going on last week, and now it’s just focus on tennis, and there is a bit of pressure.
SABALENKA: Why do you think that the week before wasn’t focused on tennis?
Q. Oh, I think you were. I just think you were busy with a lot of events.
SABALENKA: It’s like my hobby outside of tennis, the whole schedule we plan is all around tennis, so all of those events is not drawing me in any way.
And all people that I work, all brands that I work with, I choose them very carefully. I have to be really comfortable around those people just so in that case I’m not drawing my energy when I’m surrounded by them. So I’m really enjoying my time with my brands, with people who works there.
I have fun. It’s like my hobby outside of my tennis schedule, and it actually gives me so much energy.
Q. It was just announced that there’s going to be an advisory board for the Grand Slams, with players having a say in things in the future. Curious on whether or not you would want to be part of those conversations, and as a player that’s still fairly new to the tour, what would you hope comes out of that?
MIRRA ANDREEVA: I didn’t hear about it. I don’t know. I didn’t talk about it yet, so I cannot comment anything because I don’t know. Maybe I’ll get the info later, I guess.
Q. A follow-up. Do you see yourself joining the player council for the WTA or other councils that kind of arise in the future? Is that something you might want to delve into?
ANDREEVA: Well, maybe in the future. For now, I don’t see myself in this, I would say. Maybe in the future something changes, but for now I feel like I do have my focus set on different things for now.
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