Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova moved a step closer to back-to-back grand slam titles by beating Peyton Stearns to reach the US Open quarter-finals.
The 24-year-old Czech, seeded ninth here two months after becoming the first unseeded woman to win at SW19, fell a set behind to Stearns.
But the American youngster, whose powerful forehand accounted for Britain’s Katie Boulter in round three, won just five more games as Vondrousova triumphed 6-7 (3) 6-3 6-2.
Marketa is moving on! 😤 pic.twitter.com/dsd9REqoc1
— US Open Tennis (@usopen) September 4, 2023
“She was playing great from the beginning and I just tried to stay in the game,” said Vondrousova.
“She is a very dangerous player, she has a great future ahead of her and it was a very tough match.
READ MORE: Novak Djokovic eases into another grand slam quarter-final
“I’m very happy. I didn’t expect this, after Wimbledon there was a lot of pressure but I’m feeling good and we’ll see what happens next.”
Madison Keys is also in the last eight (Manu Fernandez/AP)
What happens next is a meeting with Madison Keys, a former Flushing Meadows runner-up who sprung a mild surprise against fellow American Jessica Pegula, the third seed.
Keys, seeded 17, is emulating the form which swept her to the final in 2017 and sunk the highly-fancied Pegula 6-1 6-3.
The 28-year-old said: “It’s always tough having to play a friend but we’ve been doing it all our lives. On court it’s all business but then we go back to being friends.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here