Stephens wins through to US Open quarters

Sloane Stephens took her winning streak at the US Open to 11 matches following her straight-sets dismissal of Elise Mertens on Sunday night.

The defending champion posted a 6-3 6-3 victory to set up a meeting with Anastasija Sevastova – a rematch of their quarterfinal at Flushing Meadows last year.

The one-sided scoreline told a different story than what transpired during the match itself; this was a tightly-contested battle between two in-form players with no obvious weaknesses.

Sloane Stephens, seeded No. 3, advanced to quarterfinals of the US Open on Sunday night with an impressive 6-3, 6-3 win over No. 15 seed Elise Mertens. The defending champion is the highest seed left in the draw, five ticks above No. 8 Karolina… https://t.co/XOzGIsgYuI

— Pete Bodo (@ptbodo) September 3, 2018

“(It’s) never easy,” Stephens said on court after sealing victory in two sets both extending almost 45 minutes.

“(I’ve played) two great opponents (Kalinina and Azarenka) and then obviously today, Elise, she’s a great up-and-coming player, and she’s had an unbelievable season, she beat me two weeks ago.

“So I knew that I was gonna have to come out here and fight and do my absolute best and I played a solid match from start to finish so I can’t really ask for much more.”

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Stephens indeed fell in straight sets to Mertens when they met in the last 16 at Cincinnati, but was quick to point out following her third-round win that she had felt fatigued after her run to the final in Montreal a week earlier.

When asked what she had learned about Mertens from their Cincinnati meeting, Stephens was vague.

“I didn’t really dwell on the match too much and go back and look at it – I just was kind of over it because I was ready to move on,” Stephens said. “I know that she competed well. She had a good serve? I don’t know (laughter).”

Whatever lessons she did take from that encounter, she put them into practice on Sunday night. Before a packed crowd at Arthur Ashe Stadium, she broke early and forged ahead 3-1.

She lost that break, and it wasn’t the prettiest tennis – she finished the match with 25 unforced errors to her 17 winners. But she was far more consistent than the No.15 seed, who troubled Stephens at times with her pace of shot and change of direction, but who was ultimately undone by 35 unforced errors (to just 12 winners).

The last of those errors handed Stephens a match point, which the American converted when she ended a long rally with a crunching inside-out forehand winner.

“That was pretty good, huh?” she said to the crowd.

“It really means the world to me that you guys come out here and support, so my first night match out here was pretty impeccable.”

Stephens most recently dismissed Sevastova for the loss of only four games in Montreal, but she knows how dangerous the Latvian – who progressed to her third straight US Open quarterfinal after a win over No.7 seed Elina Svitolina – can be.

When they last met in New York, Stephens scraped through 6-3 3-6 7-6(4).

“I think at a tournament you have a couple of really tough matches you have to battle through, and I think that last year was the one I had to dig deep,” Stephens said.

“So I had to fight my way through that one and I’m sure she’ll give me a tough match on Tuesday so really looking forward to it.”