Veteran status won the night on Tuesday at Arthur Ashe.
Four years her senior and five more years under her belt competing in grand slams, Aryna Sabalenka entered with the upper hand on China’s Qinwen Zheng.
While it wasn’t Sabalenka’s cleanest match, she remained in total control, winning in straight sets 6-1, 6-2 to punch her ticket to her fourth consecutive semifinal at the U.S. Open in just an hour and 13 minutes.
The Belarusian now holds a 3-0 record over the 21-year-old — all of which ended in straight sets on big stages — and Sabalenka has won 12 of her 15 titles on the hard court surface.
It was a rematch of the 2024 Australian Open final in January — Zheng’s first Grand Slam final — that saw Sabalenka defend her title from the previous year.
Additionally, in Flushing just a year ago, the two met in the quarterfinals and Sabalenka topped Zheng to eventually reach the final before losing to Coco Gauff.
The world No. 2 player next faces American Emma Navarro in the semis.
“Drinks on me tonight,” Sabalenka joked in an ESPN interview in answering how she can win over the American crowd.
She, however, was all business on the court from the start, not high-fiving fans as she entered and she didn’t wait a second to break the Paris Olympics gold medalist in her first service game.
She collected two powerful forehand winners and forced a few unforced errors by Zheng to do so.
Sabalenka went on to win the first three games and later broke Zheng again in the sixth game thanks to four errors from her opponent, in which three were consecutive.
In the final game of the first set, a second double fault of the game from Sabalenka led to deuce.
However, after two rounds of deuce, Sabalenka notched the first set after two unforced errors from Zheng.
Sabalenka made three rare double faults and 13 unforced errors in the first set that caused her to grow frustrated, shaking her head.
Sixty-seven percent of her first serves were in play in the first set, which was low for her, but she improved to 77 percent and just six unforced errors in the final set to cruise to the victory.