No. 23 seed Naomi Osaka advanced to a Grand Slam quarterfinal for the first time since 2021 by routing No. 3 Coco Gauff 6-3, 6-2 in the U.S. Open Round of 16 on Monday in New York.
Osaka won 15 of her 16 first-serve points (93.8 percent) and needed just 64 minutes to finish her dismantling of Gauff, the 2023 winner at the Billie Jean King Center.
“I was super locked-in,” Osaka said in her on-court interview. “I felt like everyone wanted to watch a really great match and I hope that’s what you got.”
It was no contest from the outset as Osaka reached the quarterfinals at a major for the fifth time in her career. She won each of the other four — twice at the Australian Open (2019, 2021) and twice at the U.S. Open (2018, 2020).
Osaka zipped through the first two games to start off a strong opening set. The second set was tied at 2-2 before Osaka turned it up a notch and sailed to the finish.
Gauff, 21, had a rough day with 33 unforced errors and five double faults against just eight winners.
Osaka, 27, next will face No. 11 Karolina Muchova of the Czech Republic. Muchova was a 6-3, 6-7 (0), 6-3 winner over No. 27 Marta Kostyuk of Ukraine.
Muchova reached the U.S. Open semifinals in each of the past two years. Muchova and Osaka have split four career meetings, the last two of which have been at Grand Slams.
In other early Monday action, second-seeded Iga Swiatek of Poland returned to form, running away with a 6-3, 6-1 win over No. 13 seed Ekaterina Alexandrova of Russia.
After Swiatek was taken to three sets in her second-round match and took nearly two hours with a tiebreaker to defeat Anna Kalinskaya in the third round, she needed just 64 minutes to advance to the U.S. Open quarterfinals for the second straight year.
Swiatek had seven aces and 21 winners to Alexandrova’s 11 in her runaway win.
“I felt like I’m really in my bubble, in the zone,” Swiatek said. “Sometimes I was making risky decisions, and I think I forced the ball to go in.”
As she looks to win a second consecutive Grand Slam for the first time in her career after winning the Wimbledon title in July, the 24-year-old Swiatek became the youngest woman since Maria Sharapova in 2005 to advance to the quarterfinals in all four Grand Slams of a single season.
She’s looking for her second career U.S. Open title after winning in 2022, which remains her only Grand Slam title on a hard court. She’s won four French Opens (2020, 2022-24) along with her first Wimbledon this summer.
Swiatek will face the winner of Thursday evening’s clash between eighth-seeded Amanda Anisimova — whom she beat 6-0, 6-0 in the Wimbledon final — and No. 18 Beatriz Haddad Maia of Brazil for a spot in the semifinals.
–Field Level Media
