For a refresher on what all the metrics in this writeup mean, click here.
We have reached the final weekend of the 2024 US Open. Aryna Sabalenka, Emma Navarro, Jessica Pegula, and Karolina Muchova will fight it out to win a historic Grand Slam title. We look at the US Open women’s semifinals by reviewing how our models evaluated each of their journeys through the draw and end with a prediction for each match.
(2) Aryna Sabalenka vs (13) Emma Navarro
Emma Navarro smashed her way into this tournament, losing just 4 games in the first two rounds. Since then, she has faced 3 tougher tests, dropping a set to each of Marta Kostyuk and Coco Gauff and coming back from 5-1 down in the 2nd set against Paula Badosa. But in every match, Navarro has built a margin for herself thanks to her work behind her return of serve. Navarro has broken serve at least 4 times in each of her matches, and the only match in which she did not have at least 8 break points was in the 2nd round, a match in which she won 58% of all return points. Of the players in the women’s semifinals, Navarro has broken serve the most, with 25 breaks. Of her 5 matches, 4 are in the top 31 Return CFOE Ratings in the women’s main draw.
As good as Navarro has been behind her return, Aryna Sabalenka has been even better behind her serve. She has been broken just 4 times all tournament, 3 of which were in her match against the extremely streaky Ekaterina Alexandrova. She has even faced just 1 break point or fewer twice, including in her most recent match against Olympic Gold Medalist Qinwen Zheng. She has had only one match with a serve Excitement Average higher than average in this tournament, and the only times her win probability has been below 50% in any of her 5 matches have been in the 1st game of the match and a stretch of her match against Alexandrova. Sabalenka has been incredibly dominant in this tournament.
Sabalenka’s serve against Navarro’s return should be a very good matchup, but if we expand our analysis past this tournament, we are more confident in Sabalenka’s serve than Navarro’s return. If Sabalenka can hold her nerve in the big moments and get on top of a few returns of her own, this match could become one-way traffic, much like it was at Roland Garros this year.
Prediction: Sabalenka in 2. Our model has Sabalenka’s win probability just over 73%. Below are the simulated outcomes.
(6) Jessica Pegula vs Karolina Muchova
Karolina Muchova may be unseeded, but she is very dangerous. After a long hiatus due to a wrist injury sustained in her run to the semifinals of last year’s US Open, Muchova has been fantastic in this tournament, not dropping a set in her run so far. Muchova has created a lot of chaos in her return games, but she has been especially dominant behind her own serve. Her quarterfinal against Bia Haddad Maia was a strange one, with neither player feeling particularly well, but outside of that, her serve Excitement Average started out dominant – far below the mean in her first match against Katie Volynets – and improved in every match, to the point where her serve in her 3rd and 4th round matches was more dominant than even that of the average man at the US Open.
Jessica Pegula has largely been similarly dominant on her own serve, and like Muchova, she has not lost a set so far in this tournament. Diana Shnaider was able to make a mess of Pegula’s service games, with an Excitement Index above 0.4, but Pegula was able to do the same to Shnaider’s serve and was far more effective on break points. Pegula has been incredible at managing the balance of opportunities – her serve Excitement Average has been lower than her return Excitement Average in each of her last 4 matches.
Neither player in this matchup has a lot of exploitable holes. But between Muchova’s health and the impact of the Arthur Ashe Stadium crowd, we project that Jessica Pegula’s return game will take over in a way that no one else’s has so far.
Prediction: Pegula in 3. Our model has Pegula’s win probability at 68%. Below are the simulated outcomes.
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