Over the course of nearly two-and-a-half hours, the unseeded Sloane Stephens and No. 16 Anastasija Sevastova marched in lockstep, trading looping ground strokes over lengthy rallies. Stephens won the first set, 6-3; Sevastova won the second by the same margin.
The Latvian took a slight edge in the third and final frame, going up 3-1 and even pushing ahead to a break point for a 4-1 advantage. But it didn’t last long. And so these two evenly matched baseliners battled on, to 3-3, 4-4 and 5-5, with games routinely going to deuce and the lopsided ones progressing from 30-30.
There was so much on the line - a spot in the US Open semifinals, a first for both and a first-ever major semi for Sevastova. And so on they went, with the match appropriately culminating in the most dramatic event in tennis: the deciding-set tiebreak!
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