WHAT HAPPENED: Brazilian and No. 22 seed Beatriz Haddad Maia cracked 40 winners over a grueling 2 hours and 41 minutes to defeat two-time US Open finalist Caroline Wozniacki, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3 and advance to her second-ever Grand Slam quarterfinal.
“Caroline is such a [fighter],” Haddad Maia said after the match. “I respect her a lot. Her career is amazing, still amazing. I’m very happy [to win] because I respect her, and I know it was a very tough battle.”
Both enjoyed relatively routine wins en route to the second week, with Wozniacki dropping zero sets and Haddad Maia losing just one—the first she played of the tournament against Elina Avanesyan. While the Brazilian lefty had the seed next to her name in this matchup, Wozniacki—the oldest player left in the women’s draw—possessed more experience at this stage. This would be the Dane’s eighth Round of 16 match at the US Open, while the higher-ranked Haddad Maia had never before advanced past the second round. (She had, however, recorded second-week appearances at Wimbledon and the French Open, where she ultimately reached the semifinals.)
From the outset, this battle was destined to go the distance—the first two games alone took 16 minutes as both struggled to hold their serves. Wozniacki in particular grappled with that shot in the early stages, hitting three double faults and winning just one of seven second serve points before the first changeover. Meanwhile, despite dropping her own first service game, Haddad Maia seemed to consistently keep her opponent on the back foot with her depth and power. She earned the double break as Wozniacki could not hold, and the 2018 Australian Open champion smacked her racquet on the ground. At 5-1, Wozniacki finally held her serve (at love), and then took a 15-30 lead as a momentary electronic line-calling outage briefly interrupted play.
When they resumed, however, Haddad Maia hit three aces en route to claiming the first set 6-2—in 55 minutes.
Haddad Maia really loosened up her arm after taking the lead, hitting three winners in a row to immediately break her opponent to begin the second. Then, Wozniacki hunkered down and started to play the Wozniacki game that can give any opponent fits, relying on her speed to extend the rallies where she could and cutting down on her mistakes. (A huge factor in why the Dane lost the first set: She hit a very uncharacteristic 14 unforced errors.) She won the next two games and earned four chances to break on Haddad Maia’s next serve, one after a vintage Wozniacki 10-shot rally that ended when she hit a backhand passing shot winner. Finally, she broke when Haddad Maia double faulted, then held her own serve to take a 4-1 lead. Indeed Wozniacki was feeling herself down the stretch; serving at 4-2, she saved two break points with an ace and a forehand winner up the line, two shots for which she is not primarily known. Consistently absorbing Haddad Maia’s pace to great effect, she served it out at 5-3 to even the score.
On paper, Haddad Maia seemed to hold the edge in the decider, considering her reputation for toughing out three-set matches; she’d already played 16 three-setters in 2024. That is, in practice, how it played out. For the third straight set, she broke her opponent’s serve on her very first service game. Wozniacki could not maintain the level that marked the second and never made serious in-roads on her opponent’s serve—though she did save one match point in the final game by refusing to miss during a punishing 20-shot rally that had both players gasping for air. Haddad Maia, too, saved multiple break points in that game, ultimately advancing to her first-ever US Open quarterfinal.
WHAT IT MEANS: Haddad Maia is the second player from Brazil to make the women's quarterfinals of the US Open during the Open Era, after Maria Bueno reached the semifinals in 1968. She’s also the first left-handed player ever from South America to earn a spot in the final eight at Flushing Meadows.
“It’s very special to hear that, I did not know that before the match,” a visibly emotional Haddad Maia said when told those facts in her on-court interview. “I always say, me, my team, my family, we work very hard…to create the opportunity to get these matches. It's a privilege for me to be here, to not only represent Brazil but South America and the left-handed ones! It feels very special, I don’t have a lot of words now.”
Haddad Maia now faces Karolina Muchova for a chance to reach a second Grand Slam semifinal. Muchova has captured all three matches the pair have contested, though they played three sets the last time they met, on the hard courts in Cincinnati in 2023.
MATCH POINT: Haddad Maia didn’t back down from the extended rallies. She won 22 of the rallies that lasted longer than nine shots, while Wozniacki won 23; 12 of those came in the final set.
