A REMARKABLE RUN
Svitolina third top contender vanquished by Canadian teen in amazing U.S. Open run
Laval's Leylah Fernandez reacts after winning her U.S. Open quarter-final match against Ukraine's Elina Svitolina in New York on Tuesday — the latest in a series of surprising upsets for the 19-year-old. Felix Auger-aliassime also won his match.
Leylah Fernandez has pulled off so many upsets in New York, they can't really be called upsets anymore.
The 19-year-old from Laval, Que., added another top-10 WTA player to her list of the vanquished on Tuesday afternoon, knocking off Elina Svitolina in the quarter-finals at the U.S. Open to continue a remarkable run at the National Tennis Center in New York City.
Fernandez, who just turned 19 on Monday, took three sets (6-3, 3-6, 7-6) to beat the 26-year-old Ukrainian, who was ranked fifth in the world and has been in the top 10 every day since May of 2017. When Svitolina first cracked the WTA top 10, Fernandez was 13 years old.
Fernandez took a lead in the deciding third set before Svitolina clawed back, but the crucial tiebreaker was won by the Canadian kid, who took it by a score of 7-5 with all the calm and poise of a veteran who had seen and done it all before, rather than someone who, well, had not.
When it was over, Fernandez fell to her knees and put her head on the court, near tears.
The win, coming after consecutive victories over former U.S. Open champions Naomi Osaka and Angelique Kerber, propels Fernandez into the semifinals in New York — which would have been unprecedented heights for a Canadian but for Bianca Andreescu's thrilling run to the U.S. Open title two years ago.
But while there are certainly some similarities between the New York runs of Andreescu and Fernandez — both Canadians were playing their first full seasons at the top level of the WTA and both were teens — this one is more of a bolt out of the blue. Andreescu's career had already taken off like a rocket in 2019, when she won at Indian Wells and in Toronto, and she had been close to unbeatable that season when she wasn't missing time due to injury.
Fernandez, meanwhile, was progressing through a fine rookie season, with a win at a smaller event in Monterrey, Mexico, but she hadn't been blowing anyone away. She was sitting at 73rd in the WTA rankings, but lost in the first round in Cincinnati and in Montreal last month, and lost in the second round at the Olympics. She lost in the first round in her first main draw visit to Wimbledon in July. She was a kid with a bunch of promise, but she wasn't expected to realize it so quickly. Like, say, now.
Fernandez, evidently, thought otherwise. She was asked after the win over Osaka when she thought she might be able to pull out the victory over one of the biggest stars in the women's game, and she coolly replied that she thought she could win from the outset. After the win over Kerber, she was asked what had surprised her about her giant-killing streak, and she responded that nothing much had and that this was what she wanted to do when she decided to become a professional.
“I expected that one day my tennis game is going to come through and that I'm going to be on the big stage in front of a big crowd playing against big players and also getting the wins,” said Fernandez, born in Montreal to an Ecuadorean father and Filipino-canadian mother.
“I'm not surprised about anything that's happening right now. I'm just glad that it's happening now and not later in the year, but we're just going to enjoy this time and take this one day at a time.”
Some degree of that attitude must be in part due to the efforts of Andreescu before her, and her compatriots on the men's side of the draw. Denis Shapovalov went to the semifinals in Wimbledon and Felix Auger-aliassime had his own shot at the U.S. Open's final four with a latenight match on Tuesday in New York. Before them, Milos Raonic and Eugenie Bouchard made the idea of a Canadian going deep at a Slam no longer seem crazy.
Fernandez's comfortable confidence was on full display against Svitolina. Even though the Ukrainian is a veteran with loads of experience at Grand Slams, it was the Canadian teen who started the match in control. Svitolina appeared flustered by the left-handed play of her opponent, and her tentative approach allowed Fernandez to settle in and make few mistakes as she took the opening set.
Svitolina became more aggressive in the second set, dictating more of the play and roaring out to a 5-1 lead on the back of a couple of service breaks. Fernandez fought back with a break of her own and had a great chance to level the set, but Svitolina saved three break points and then finished off the set with an ace.
That set up the drama of the third set, and the eventual win. There is more yet to come.