US Open, September 9: Rybakina's No. 1 shot against Zheng's revival, Gauff meets Andreeva

The quarterfinals in New York have narrowed to a day of two matches, and both of them earn their place. First Zheng Qinwen, who arrived in this draw through qualifying and now sits three wins from the title, tries to slow down Elena Rybakina, who has been hitting the ball flatter and earlier with every round. Then come the two most recent Roland Garros champions, Coco Gauff and Mirra Andreeva, in a rivalry that is still waiting for its first genuine twist.

What links them is a question of currency: does momentum built out of chaos beat momentum built out of order? Zheng and Andreeva have both survived long, ugly, emotionally expensive matches this fortnight. Rybakina and Gauff have mostly avoided that kind of weather. I'll take them in order of play:

15:30 — Zheng Qinwen — Elena Rybakina
17:00 — Mirra Andreeva — Coco Gauff

Times are UTC.

Zheng Qinwen — Elena Rybakina

Zheng's run is the strangest thing in the draw. She had surgery on her right elbow, spent months feeling like a stranger to her own game, and came into this tournament ranked outside the top hundred — 121st, to be exact, with a 17-3 career record here that now reads like a hint rather than a coincidence. She beat Elena Pridankina and Kristina Liutova from a set down, ground out Yulia Putintseva 6-4 2-6 6-1, then came back from 1-6 and the edge of elimination to beat Madison Keys 1-6 7-6(3) 7-5. Against Iga Swiatek she made another poor start and still won 7-5 6-3, which is the part I find most telling: she did not collapse after the comeback, she kept the initiative. "The body right now is finally all good. I play without pain," she said of her elbow (AO), and of the training block that saved her season: "If you don't work hard, you don't have it" (WTA).

Rybakina has come the other way — quietly, cheaply, four rounds without a scare worth the name. Thea Frodin, Jessica Bouzas Maneiro and Yuliia Starodubtseva took a set apiece off nobody, and against Naomi Osaka she was ruthless, 6-1 6-4, taking the ball early and making Osaka hit off balance. "I played really well today. Feeling the ball was really good from my side," she said afterwards (US Open). She is winning 83% of her hard-court matches this year, and beyond a semifinal there is the tour's top ranking waiting for her, which is an unusual amount of concrete reward to hang on one afternoon. The caveat is her left ankle: she hurt it in Cincinnati, withdrew from the mixed event, and admitted that "for a couple of days, it was painful to even walk" (US Open). Nothing has looked wrong in four rounds, but a long match of changed directions is a different examination.

They have met five times and Rybakina leads 4-1. She won their last two, both from a set down: 4-6 6-2 7-5 in Doha in February on hard, then 4-6 6-4 6-3 in Madrid in April on clay. Zheng's only win came indoors at the WTA Finals in Riyadh in November 2024, 7-6(4) 3-6 6-1. That pattern is worth pausing on — twice this year Zheng got the first set and could not close, which is exactly the kind of memory Rybakina's flat, quick-through-the-court ball is built to exploit. The tactical key, to my eye, is whether Zheng can make Rybakina move sideways rather than strike from a settled base, and whether she can afford another of her sleepy openings. Keys and Swiatek let her back in; Rybakina is a far less forgiving front-runner.

I lean Rybakina, and firmly — the fresher legs, the cleaner tennis, the head-to-head. But 1.33 is a short price on a player carrying a recent ankle problem against someone who has already recovered from 1-6 and from two sets' worth of trouble this week. If Zheng finds her forehand inside the first four games, this goes three, and the over on 22 games starts to look sensible. My best guess is Rybakina in a match that is tighter than her price suggests, with the handicap of −3.5 a genuine coin-flip.

Mirra Andreeva — Coco Gauff

Five meetings, five Gauff wins — and that is the shadow over everything else here. Three of them came in Masters quarterfinals on clay: Madrid 2025, 7-5 6-1; Rome 2025, 6-4 7-6(5); Rome again this May, 4-6 6-2 6-4, where Andreeva took the first set and then lost the thread. Their only hard-court meeting was in the second round here in 2023, 6-3 6-2, when Andreeva was still a teenager finding her way and Gauff was about to win the title. Andreeva is a different player now, a Roland Garros champion with a top-five ranking, but the ledger has not moved, and Gauff was clear about how she reads it: "I treat every matchup differently… we never play easy matches against each other. They are always super tough" (US Open).

Gauff has been steadier than spectacular and then, at the important moments, better than steady. Paula Badosa made her earn the second set 7-6(5), Cristina Bucsa's touch and variety dragged her into forecourt exchanges she did not enjoy, and Iva Jovic broke her in the opening game before losing 6-1 6-4. She has not played a decider in this tournament, she arrives with a Cincinnati title behind her, and she is 24-7 lifetime in New York. "I feel like I'm at the point where I'm used to being in this position," she said of another major quarterfinal (WTA) — and the odd thing about that sentence is how little swagger is in it. It sounds like a woman describing her commute.

Andreeva's week has cost her more. Janice Tjen and Eva Lys were dispatched without fuss, Nikola Bartunkova pushed her to 7-6(5) in the second and brought out the first nerves — Conchita Martínez, she said, "just told me to believe in myself" (US Open). Then came Anastasia Potapova: 5-7 6-4 6-3, a match Andreeva solved only by stepping inside the baseline and accepting mess, and which ended with Potapova hurt at the knee and Andreeva walking her to the chair. "I'm happy with how I was fighting, but still, I'm pretty sad with how it all ended," she said (WTA). No injuries on either side, but one of them has a mile more on the clock and an evening she would rather not think about.

The match hinges on rhythm. Gauff wants long crosscourt exchanges where her height, spin and extraordinary recovery speed force Andreeva to hit one extra attacking ball than she wants to. Andreeva's way in is to refuse that pattern: change heights, open the short angle, bring Gauff forward on her own terms and finish at the net. Ashe is the other variable — Gauff feeds on that noise, while Andreeva has occasionally let frustration speed up her shot selection, and Martínez's calm between points may matter as much as any tactic.

Gauff at 1.517 feels about right, and I expect her to win — the lighter workload, the defence that has always asked Andreeva an uncomfortable question, and five straight wins in the file. But I do not expect it in straight sets. Andreeva has already taken a set off Gauff this year in Rome and will not be intimidated by the record, so the +3.5 games for her looks the more comfortable side, and the over on 21.5 games is where I would lean. If this reaches a decider, all bets on Gauff's authority are back in the pot.

Two comebacks, one ranking and a rivalry that needs its first surprise

Three questions define the day for me. Whether Zheng's elbow and her rediscovered fire can survive an opponent who does not wait; whether Rybakina's ankle and the weight of a No. 1 ranking sit quietly through a two-hour argument; and whether Andreeva can finally interrupt a head-to-head that has never once gone her way. The nicest thing about this quarterfinal pair is the contrast: two players who have thrived in chaos against two who have made calm their weapon.

I would settle in for the opening twenty minutes of both matches, because that is where each of them is likeliest to be decided — Zheng has been surviving bad starts all fortnight, and Rybakina will not lend her one. As for the specific numbers on these two quarterfinals, that is work for the AI cappers on the match pages; they get down to the detail I only circle around here.