Wednesday's play at the 2025 US Open boasts a host of marquee matchups, featuring some of the biggest names in the game in quarterfinal play. In what promises to be a most memorable equation, two women’s quarters plus two men’s quarters equal one whole day of thrills in Arthur Ashe Stadium.
First up, men’s No. 25 seed Felix Auger-Aliassime takes on eighth-seeded Alex de Minaur, followed by 2022 US Open women’s champion Iga Swiatek vs. women’s No. 8 seed Amanda Anisimova in a rematch of this year’s Wimbledon final. This evening features two-time US Open women’s titlist Naomi Osaka against No. 11 Karolina Muchova, followed by defending men’s champion Jannik Sinner squaring off with countryman and 10th seed Lorenzo Musetti.
As the matches get tougher, so must the competitors. With the home stretch in sight, this is no time to lose focus.
Through any lens, it’s clear that women’s second seed Swiatek has had a sensational season, capturing her sixth Grand Slam singles title at Wimbledon and reaching the semis of both the Aussie Open and Roland Garros. Her Wimbledon win put her in the elite company of Margaret Court and Monica Seles as the only women in the Open Era to take the title in each of their first six Grand Slam singles finals. In short, if Swiatek plays a seventh match, she wins a seventh match. At the Slams, the 24-year-old Pole doesn’t do second place.
The 2022 champion is into the quarters here for the second consecutive year, playing her way to this point with the loss of just a single set. If she can finish first in Flushing, Swiatek will become the first woman since Serena Williams in 2012 to win Wimbledon and the US Open in a single season. That seems a very real possibility at this point, as the former champ increasingly appears to be a present threat. Her fourth-round win over Ekaterina Alexandrova was a clinic, as the second seed breezed to a 6-3, 6-1 win in a scant one hour, four minutes.
She figures to linger longer against Anisimova, the 24-year-old American who’s into the quarters of her home major for the first time in her career. She’s playing here as a top eight seed for the first time at a Slam, but Anisimova announced her presence with authority earlier this summer, blasting her way into the Wimbledon final, knocking out women’s No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka in the semis before losing a double-bagel decision to Swiatek in the final. The 2017 US Open girls champion, Anisimova captured her third career singles crown at the start of this year at the hard-court Doha event.
The aforementioned Wimbledon final is the only time the two women have met, and it’s likely a meeting the American would like to forget. She’ll no doubt bring her best to this return engagement, but the way the second seed is playing, her best is not likely to be enough. Anisimova will make it closer, but it's hard to see how she can close. In a tight two, Swiatek is on to the semis.
Men’s top seed Sinner has, of course, become a fixture in the latter stages of a Slam, this year winning both the Aussie Open and Wimbledon, while finishing second to Carlos Alcaraz at the French. At 24, the Italian is in a league almost his own, laying siege to the Slams with his chief (and, at present, only) rival, Alcaraz. Sinner is competing in his eighth consecutive Slam quarterfinal, winning four of the last seven Slams in which he’s played. His win here last year not only made him the first Italian man ever to claim a US Open title, but added him to a list that includes Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and Mats Wilander as the only men ever to win both hard-court majors in a single season. He’s now on the verge of pulling off a cement Slam double in back-to-back years.
Conversely, Sinner’s countryman Musetti is experiencing success at a hard-court Slam for the first time in his career. Never before had the 23-year-old been beyond the third round in Melbourne or Flushing. But the 10th seed posted his best career performance at a major earlier this year, scoring back-to-back wins over Holger Rune and Frances Tiafoe to reach the semis of Roland Garros. His run here makes him just the third Italian man (Matteo Berrettini and Sinner the others) to reach Grand Slam quarterfinals on clay, grass and hard courts. A bronze medalist at the 2024 Paris Olympics, Musetti has been sterling here, dropping just one set in his advance.
Things figure to get a lot tougher for the 10th seed in Ashe, as Sinner owns a 2-0 edge in their career meetings. I suppose the good news for Musetti is that the two men haven’t gone head-to-head since 2023. Of course, the bad news for Musetti is that Sinner is a much more complete player than he was two years ago. Actually, that’s pretty much bad news for everybody else. In three, the top seed is a semifinalist.
