The 19-year-old from Quebec celebrated her birthday just days ago and she joins her fellow Montrealer, 21-year-old Felix Auger-Aliassime, in the semi-finals of the US Open. But after a series of stunning performances at the US Open, she is the toast of the town – french toast with extra maple syrup, to be precise.
The players should be on court for their warm-up in a half hour.īryan will be here shortly, in the meantime here’s Shireen Ahmed on Canada’s recent tennis success:Ī few months ago, Leylah Annie Fernandez was far from a household name in Canada. It’s a gray, temperate 71F (22F) evening in Queens with the afternoon rains having moved on for the night (we hope). She has won an impressive 81% of her first-serve points at Flushing Meadows, while her 29 aces have taken her season total past 300. And she’s one of the in-form players of the tournament, having been broken only twice in 40 service games since surrendering her serve three times in the opening set and half of her first-round match with Nina Stojanovic. The 23-year-old Belarusian has captured 10 tour titles in her career and climbed to No 2 in the world rankings.
Sabalenka, well, she needs no introduction if you’re even a casual observer of the women’s tour. The 73th-ranked Fernandez, who toppled defending champion Naomi Osaka, 2016 winner Angelique Kerber and the No 5 seed Elina Svitolina en route to the semi-finals (while celebrating her 19th birthday on Monday), is the only fourth Canadian woman in the Open era to reach the last four at a major, following in the footsteps of Carling Bassett-Seguso (1984 US Open), Eugenie Bouchard (2014 Australian Open 2014 Roland Garros 2014 Wimbledon) and Bianca Andreescu (2019 US Open).
We’ve got a cracker of a match in store as the second-seeded Sabalenka looks to shed her nominal title as the best active player to have never won a major title against the surprise package Fernandez, who has rode a series of upsets into the last four. Hello and welcome to Arthur Ashe Stadium for tonight’s first of two US Open women’s semi-finals between Leylah Annie Fernandez and Aryna Sabalenka.
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