WHAT HAPPENED: Court 11 turned into Peyton Place on Wednesday night.
American Peyton Stearns is at it again at the US Open, and her journey in Flushing Meadows for 2024 continues after a convincing 6-1, 7-6(3) victory over No. 12 seed Daria Kasatkina. The match was initially scheduled for Court 5 before each of the three matches preceding it (two men’s matches and one women’s) went the distance, but Stearns made short work of her second-round opponent in just 1 hour and 21 minutes.
Stearns is now into the third round for a second successive US Open, building off her fourth-round appearance last year.
A matchup between two of the better returners in the game turned into one-way traffic in the first set, with Stearns winning the first three games of the match on her way to sealing up the opening frame in 24 minutes.
Stearns then jumped out to a 3-1 lead in the second, taking advantage of Kasatkina’s struggles with double faults all throughout the summer. But after holding her serve in her first six service games, Stearns caught Kasatkina’s bug, as the American was broken in three of the next four service games. Two of those breaks came when Stearns was serving for the match at both 5-4 and 6-5, with Stearns throwing in double faults to end each of those games.
But Stearns rebounded from those disappointments in the tiebreak, winning the first two points of the breaker and sailing the rest of the way home.
WHAT IT MEANS: Today’s match completes the 2024 Grand Slam trilogy between the two, with Stearns coming out on top in the series; Kasatkina triumphed in a first-round match in Melbourne over the American in three sets before Stearns turned the tables at Roland Garros with a straight-sets victory in the second round.
MATCH POINT: Many familiar with collegiate sports know that one of the rallying cries for fans of the University of Texas is “Hook ‘em,” and the former Longhorn is making a habit of hooking some big catches on the grandest of stages.
With Wednesday's victory, the 22-year-old Stearns now has five wins over Top 20 players in her career, and all have come at either a Grand Slam or at a WTA 1000 event. Her previous two wins against such competition at a major came at Roland Garros: against Kasatkina earlier this year and against Jelena Ostapenko in 2023.
