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Sports · US Open 2026 · Women's Singles · Semi-finals
Elena Rybakina vs 
Coco Gauff
Thursday, September 10, 2026 · Semi-finals
Watch: ESPN · ESPN Deportes · ESPN app
My pick: Elena Rybakina to advance · locked 2026-09-09 19:55 UTCPrediction
This is the closest call left in the draw and the numbers say so from both directions. Rybakina has held serve in 46 of 50 games this fortnight and faced twelve break points in five matches; Gauff has faced twenty-four and is the best returner left, winning 44.8% of her return games this season against Rybakina's 32.4%. One of those two facts has to give. I take Rybakina, narrowly, for three reasons: she won the most recent meeting, in the Toronto semi-final last month, 5-7 6-2 6-2 after losing the first set; she has spent 7h34 on court to Gauff's 8h40 and dropped one set to Gauff's one, in a fortnight where Gauff has needed the full distance twice; and she has hit thirty-seven aces to Gauff's fifteen while Gauff has hit twenty-eight double faults, third-most in the draw, twelve of them on Wednesday. What shades it back almost to level is the venue. Gauff has played all five of her matches on Arthur Ashe, has won this title, and on Wednesday saved two match points in front of a crowd that decided the third set as much as she did.
The case for Elena Rybakina
53% to winRybakina will be world No. 1 on Monday whatever happens on Thursday — she secured it outright by reaching this round, ending Sabalenka's ninety-nine-week run and becoming the thirtieth woman to hold the ranking and the first from Kazakhstan. She is the form player of the last twelve months by most measures that exist: 62 match wins, four titles, sixteen top-ten wins (six more than anyone else) and 394 aces, all tour-leading over 52 weeks. She is 34-7 on hard courts in 2026 and won the Australian Open in January from 3-0 down in the deciding set of the final. Here she has held 92% of her service games, won 81.3% of her first-serve points — second in the draw — and had not lost a set until Zheng took one off her on Wednesday. She arrived in New York with a left ankle injury and, in her own words, not practising, and this is her first US Open semi-final at the eighth attempt, having never before gone past the fourth round.
The case for Coco Gauff
47% to winGauff is the only woman left who has won this tournament, and this is her second semi-final here — the first since the 2023 title, having lost in the fourth round in each of the two years between. It is her seventh Grand Slam semi-final and she is 3-3 in the previous six, the three wins being the three she converted into finals. She has won eleven straight matches and twenty of her last twenty-two since Wimbledon, four consecutive tournament semi-finals, and the Cincinnati title last month over Pegula without dropping a set all week. She has played every match of this fortnight on Arthur Ashe. Wednesday was the fifth time in her career she has won a match after saving a match point and the second at a major — and the only woman in the Open era to win the US Open having saved one is Martina Navratilova in 1986. Her 90th major match win, on Wednesday, tied Chris Evert for the fourth-most by an American woman before turning 23.
Both cases written 2026-09-09, before the first ball — frozen into the record exactly as written, whatever the result. The percentages are mine — opinions with a percent sign on. They add to 100 because tennis has no draw to hide the rounding in.
Tale of the tape
Elena RybakinaCoco GauffPlayer vitals: US Open official player feed (usopen.org) and Tennis Abstract career match logs · as of 2026-09-04.
Career head-to-head: WTA head-to-head records; WTA player activity pages · as of 2026-09-09.
The briefing
Storylines
- The ranking is already settled. Rybakina took world No. 1 outright by winning her quarter-final, so unlike the other half of the draw this match carries no ranking consequence at all — she is No. 1 on Monday whether she wins the title or loses on Thursday.
- All four of the top four seeds reached the semi-finals. That has happened once before at the US Open in the Open era, in 1975, and not at any major since Wimbledon 2009.
- The head-to-head is 1-1 and both meetings were in Toronto, four years apart: Gauff won a 2h50 third-round match in 2022, and Rybakina won last month's semi-final from a set down. A third-round walkover to Gauff in Dubai in 2023 appears in the WTA's list of past meetings but is not counted in the record — which is where a 2-1 in Gauff's favour comes from when it appears.
- A semi-final here would not complete a set of them for Rybakina. She has now reached the last four at the Australian Open, Wimbledon and the US Open; Roland-Garros is the one she has never got past the quarter-finals of, in eight attempts.
- Gauff has hit twenty-eight double faults in five matches, third-most in the women's draw, and twelve of them came in the quarter-final she won. Rybakina has hit fourteen in the same five rounds and thirty-seven aces.
- Six of this tournament's quarter-finals went to a deciding set, tying the most in any major in the Open era — the 1980 Australian Open, the 2005 US Open and Wimbledon 2022.
- Rybakina has beaten a reigning world No. 1 nine times, more than anyone in WTA history bar Gabriela Sabatini, and nine of the last ten women to hold the ranking. She takes it herself on Monday without having beaten the incumbent to get it.
Head to head
Two meetings, one each, both in Toronto. Gauff won the 2022 third round 6-4 6-7(8) 7-6(3) in 2h50; Rybakina won last month's semi-final 5-7 6-2 6-2 after losing the opening set. A 2023 Dubai round-of-16 walkover to Gauff is listed by the WTA among their past meetings but excluded from the record, and the WTA's own Toronto preview applied the same exclusion. Aggregators that count the walkover print 2-1.
Source: WTA head-to-head records; WTA player activity pages · as of 2026-09-09.
Watch: Both women's semi-finals are in Thursday's 7 p.m. session on ESPN, with ESPN Deportes carrying the Spanish-language call — Juan Martín del Potro has been in that booth since the quarter-finals — and every court streaming in the ESPN app on an ESPN Unlimited plan. ABC's three Sundays this fortnight were opening day, the round of 16 and the men's final, so this one is cable and app only. Which semi-final goes on first has not been published. (Official US Open TV schedule; ESPN press-room release and listings, as of 2026-09-09)
Court & schedule: Arthur Ashe Stadium, Thursday 10 September in the night session. The US Open posts each day's order of play the evening before; this one is on the board. (Official US Open order of play, as of 2026-09-09)
Weather: The last two men's quarter-finals are partly sunny and 82°F this afternoon with a 6% chance of rain, and the night session is mostly cloudy at 75°F with a 17% shower chance late. Thursday, for the women's semi-finals, is the warmest day left at 84°F, with a 19% chance of showers by day and 23% overnight. Friday's men's semi-finals open damp — 77°F and a 23% shower chance — and clear to mostly sunny, with a mostly clear night at 67°F. Saturday's women's final is mostly sunny and 75°F, and then it turns: thunderstorms are 64% likely after dark on Saturday and again through Sunday's men's final at 77°F. Ashe and Armstrong close their roofs and play on; everything else waits. (National Weather Service New York forecast, as of 2026-09-09)
Venue: USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, Flushing Meadows, New York — hard.
At this Stage
The semi-finals are the last four, played on Thursday for the women and Friday for the men. Everyone still here has won five matches on these courts. Two of the four go out inside two days; the other two play the final.
