Round of 16: Aryna Sabalenka vs. Elise Mertens
Louis Armstrong Stadium – Day Session – Fourth Match
- No. 2 women’s seed Aryna Sabalenka faces her former doubles partner, No. 33 Elise Mertens of Belgium, on Sunday in Louis Armstrong Stadium, with both women seeking to advance to the US Open quarterfinals. The duo lifted the women’s doubles championship trophies at the 2021 Australian Open and 2019 US Open, prior to Sabalenka’s decision to focus on singles play.
- So far at the US Open, Sabalenka cruised to back-to-back straight-set wins over Priscilla Hon, 6-3, 6-3, and Lucia Bronzetti, 6-3, 6-1, before coming back from a first-set deficit to top No. 29 seed Ekaterina Alexandrova, 2-6, 6-1, 6-2, in the third round. By contrast, Mertens’s routine 6-3, 6-2 dismissal of Ajla Tomljanovic in the second round was sandwiched between three-set marathons: a first-round battle, 3-6, 6-4, 6-3, over Veronika Kudermetova and a nearly three-hour upset of No. 14 Madison Keys, 6-7(5), 7-5, 6-4, in the third round.
- Sabalenka, a former world No. 1 in singles and doubles, is a two-time (2023-24) Australian Open women’s singles champion. In New York, she has high hopes of bettering last year’s runner-up in which she captured the first set before bowing to Coco Gauff, 6-2, 3-6, 2-6. A former world No. 12, Mertens’s best Slam result was a semifinal run at the Australian Open in 2018, though she thrilled Flushing Meadows fans by reaching two straight quarterfinals here in 2019-20. Though Mertens has said her favorite surface is grass, most of her success has come on hard courts.
- This will be the 10th career meeting between Sabalenka and Mertens, with Sabalenka winning seven of the nine matches–including the last six. Their most recent contest was a 6-2, 6-3 decision to Sabalenka at the 2023 Australian Open during her run to her maiden Grand Slam championship. Sabalenka also won 6-4, 6-1 at the 2021 US Open.
- Following her second-round victory over Bronzetti, Sabalenka was photographed with a young girl who had dressed like her and even applied a temporary tiger tattoo on her forearm like her idol. “It was [a] really adorable moment. I just looked up, and I saw on the big screen, like, mini me. It was so cute,” Sabalenka said. “It's such a motivation to keep going to inspire the young generation. That's the main goal. Yeah, that was [a] very adorable moment.”
- Mertens, a former world No. 12 in singles, has won eight WTA singles trophies, and is also a former world No. 1 in doubles. In addition to her two championships with Sabalenka, she partnered Hsieh Su-wei to victory at Wimbledon in 2021 and the Australian Open in 2024, and has been runner-up at Wimbledon twice: in 2022 with Zhang Shuai and 2023 with Storm Hunter. Mertens’s 21 doubles titles also include the 2022 WTA Finals with Kudermetova.
