By Amy Tennery
NEW YORK (Reuters) -American Jessica Pegula reached her second straight U.S. Open semi-final with a clinical 6-3 6-3 win over twice Grand Slam champion Barbora Krejcikova on Tuesday
Fourth-ranked Pegula had a dreadful run-up to the year's final major but has flipped the script in New York, where she has yet to drop a set and fired off 17 winners to beat the unseeded Czech.
Krejcikova recovered from injuries earlier this year and saved eight match points in a fourth-round thriller to reach
the final eight but ran out of gas against the 2024 runner-up.
Pegula will face the winner of the match later on Tuesday between the defending champion and world number one Aryna Sabalenka and unseeded Czech Marketa Vondrousova.
"I feel like I'm just really comfortable," said Pegula. "It's pretty crazy... 10 years ago I never thought I'd be good at this (and reach the final stages of a slam) but I guess I am."
Krejcikova missed an overhead shot in the second game and was seen repeatedly rubbing her eyes as she struggled to deal with fatigue following two bruising back-to-back three-set matches, surrendering her serve with a double fault.
She broke back when Pegula sent a backhand into the net in the seventh game but Krejcikova immediately handed the advantage back to the American by dropping her serve again.
Pegula broke the Czech to love with a backhand winner down the line in the opening game of the second set.
Playing in her first U.S. Open quarter-final in four years, Krejcikova appeared to be heading for a swift defeat as she fell behind 4-1 with Pegula having secured the double break after the errors kept flying off her Czech rival's racket.
Although Krejcikova showed some signs of life as she regained one of the breaks in the sixth game, the effort only delayed the inevitable.
Two double faults in the final game capped a miserable day for Krejcikova, while a beaming Pegula soaked in the roaring cheers from the Arthur Ashe Stadium crowd after wrapping up the lopsided win.
(Reporting by Amy Tennery in New YorkEditing by Toby Davis and Pritha Sarkar)
