Visits: 10
Those who take the opportunity to go to Flushing Meadows Corona Park will get to see doubles, mixed doubles, wheelchair tennis and the junior tournament, beginning at noon.
Louis Armstrong Stadium will be the home of the men’s and women’s doubles semifinals. On first will be Lukasz Kubot and Marcelo Melo against Radu Albot and Malek Jaziri, who made the tournament as alternates.
That match will be followed by the Colombian duo of Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farrah against the Americans Mike Bryan and Jack Sock, who won Wimbledon together in July.
That was Bryan’s first Grand Slam men’s doubles title without his twin, Bob. Mike Bryan and Sock have won 10 matches in a row at majors.
The women’s doubles semifinals will feature the Czech pair of Barbora Krejcikova and Katerina Siniakova against Ashleigh Barty and CoCo Vandeweghe, followed by Samantha Stosur and Zhang Shuai against the second-seeded Timea Babos and Kristina Mladenovic.
The mixed doubles final was set on Wednesday, when Jamie Murray and Bethanie Mattek-Sands defeated Christian Harrison and Christina McHale, and Nikola Mektic and Alicja Rosolska beat Zhang Shuai and John Peers. Both matches went to super tiebreakers after the teams split the first two sets.
Murray and Mattek-Sands have each won Grand Slam mixed doubles titles with different partners. The final will be Saturday.
Keys returns to the final four
Last year, the U.S. Open women’s semifinals featured four American women — Sloane Stephens, Venus Williams, Madison Keys and CoCo Vandeweghe. This year, Keys is the only one of those four women to make it back.
Keys, 23, defeated Carla Suarez Navarro, 6-4, 6-3 on Wednesday night and will face Naomi Osaka in one semifinal on Thursday night.
They have met three times, including at this year’s French Open, and Keys has won all three. Their most memorable match was at the U.S. Open in 2016, when Osaka, then 18, was ahead by 5-1 in the third set but lost, 7-5, 4-6, 7-6 (3).
Nishikori reaches another U.S. Open semifinal
Kei Nishikori advanced to the U.S. Open semifinals for the third time with a 2-6, 6-4, 7-6 (5), 4-6, 6-4 victory over Marin Cilic on Wednesday. The match took 4 hours 8 minutes, the fifth longest match of the tournament so far.
Nishikori lost in the 2016 semifinals to Stan Wawrinka, the eventual winner, and was runner-up to Cilic at the 2014 Open.
Nishikori, 28, joined his Japanese countrywoman Naomi Osaka in semifinals. It is the first time Japan has had men’s and women’s semifinalists at the same major.
Weather update: It’s a little cooler
For the sixth day of the tournament, extreme heat rules are in effect, allowing for a 10-minute break between the second and third sets for women’s, boys’ and girls’ singles matches, and for a 10-minute break between the third and fourth sets of men’s matches. It was around 88 degrees and not so hot as to cause a suspension in the junior tournament, as happened on Tuesday.
Kendra Pierre-Louis, a climate reporter for The Times, wrote about how the conditions of the tournament have underscored a growing problem: increasing nighttime temperatures. Under climate change, summer nights have warmed at nearly twice the rate of summer days.
Schiavone retires
Francesca Schiavone, the 2010 French Open champion and former top-5 player, announced her retirement on Wednesday afternoon at the U.S. Open.
She said she was saying goodbye to tennis “with my heart, because my head, when I arrive here, say, ‘Please go to the court, fight,’ because I can beat many other players. But my heart say that I am in peace like this, that I am very happy about my career, my life, and everything.”
Schiavone, 38, was the first Italian woman to win a Grand Slam singles title. She was part of a golden generation of Italian women’s tennis with Flavia Pennetta, Roberta Vinci and Sara Errani.
They led Italy to its first four Fed Cup titles, winning in 2006, 2009, 2010 and 2013. Pennetta beat Vinci for the 2015 U.S. Open title. Errani and Vinci won five Grand Slam doubles titles together. Errani was a French Open finalist in 2012 and reached two other major semifinals.
All four reached the top 10, led by Schiavone, who rose as high as No. 4. Vinci and Pennetta have also retired in recent years.
“My new dream is to come here with a player and to be in a Grand Slam as a coach,” said Schiavone, who added that she has already been coaching for a few months.
Osaka reaches her first Grand Slam semifinal
Naomi Osaka had never been to a quarterfinal of a Grand Slam tournament before Wednesday, but once she got there, she played with the calm resolve of a proven veteran.
Osaka, the engaging 20-year-old from Japan, burst into one of the women’s semifinals with a decisive 6-1, 6-1, victory over the unseeded Lesia Tsurenko in Arthur Ashe Stadium.
Osaka, who was born in Japan but spent most of her childhood in the United States, became the first Japanese woman to reach the semifinal stage of a major tournament since Kimiko Date at Wimbledon in 1996. (Date lost to the eventual winner Steffi Graf.)
Her match was the first half of a big day for Japanese tennis as No. 21 Kei Nishikori was set to play No. 7 Marin Cilic in a men’s quarterfinal. It marked the first time two Japanese players have participated in the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam since Wimbledon in 1995.
That year, Shuzo Matsuoka reached the men’s quarterfinals and lost to Pete Sampras in four sets, and Date lost to Jana Novotna in straight sets in a women’s quarterfinal.
Osaka will play the winner of the quarterfinal between No, 14 Madison Keys and No. 30 Carla Suarez Navarro, which was scheduled for Wednesday night. That was expected to be a far more competitive match than Osaka’s victory over a depleted and drained Tsurenko.
Playing in the midday sun, Osaka wrapped up the win and got off court in 57 minutes. She said the conditions did not matter to her.
“I actually don’t think it’s that hot,” she said in an on-court interview. “I’m sorry. I’m used to the Florida heat. I kind of enjoyed it. I like sweating.”
She surrendered only 14 points in the first set and won it in 26 minutes as she steamrollered her overmatched opponent; Tsurenko staggered through a demanding fourth-round meeting against Marketa Vondrousova in staggering heat and humidity on Monday. Tsurenko seemed to favor her left leg at points during the match and did not appear to have the stamina left to hang with Osaka.
When it was over, Osaka went to the net to shake hands without much celebration, but she admitted that her calm outward demeanor belied inner anxiety.
“I was freaking out inside,” she said, and added, “My entire body was shaking, so I’m really glad I was able to play well today.”
This has been a breakout year for Osaka, who beat No. 1 Simona Halep to capture the Masters 1000 event at Indian Wells, Calif., in March for her first WTA tour event title. She also demonstrated her nerve by beating her idol, Serena Williams, a few weeks later in Miami.
Until this U.S. Open, Osaka’s best showing at a Grand Slam tournament was the fourth round at this year’s Australian Open.
Wednesday’s quarterfinal matchups
Tuesday’s highlights
• Top-seeded Rafael Nadal needed five sets and nearly five hours to get past Dominic Thiem in the longest match in the tournament.
• Serena Williams is back in the semifinals after a win over Karolina Pliskova on Tuesday.
• Sloane Stephens, the defending champion in women’s singles, lost in the quarterfinals to Anastasija Sevastova.
• The top American on the men’s side, No. 11 John Isner, fell to No. 3 Juan Martín del Potro.
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