This U.S. Open had been waiting for a moment like this.
Sloane Stephens, unseeded and coming back from a debilitating foot injury, provided that moment.
What began as a sleepy Tuesday afternoon at Arthur Ashe Stadium, ended in a raucous early evening party once Stephens put the finishing touches on a taut 6-3, 3-6, 7-6 (7-4) victory over Anastasija Sevastova that propelled her to into the semifinals to face Venus Williams, who defeated Petra Kvitova by the same three-set score but won 7-2 in the tiebreaker in the night session.
The 37-year-old Williams, who won the U.S. Open in 2000 and 2001, is making her first trip to the U.S. Open semis since 2010. But she will be playing her third major semifinal of the season — an accomplishment she last achieved 15 years ago.
“It definitely felt like a special match,’’ Williams said. “This match meant a lot to me … playing at home and, of course, it being a major. [In] tiebreakers, you have to play smart but you have to be aggressive. You can’t just sit back and hope. I didn’t want to hope. I wanted to, like, be doing something about my future.’’
Her future is a first-ever match against Stephens, who called Williams a “leader’’ and a player “everyone looks up to.’’
Stephens, playing at Ashe for the first time in her career, rocked the place just as Williams would hours later, both players feeding off the partisan crowd. Now Stephens and Williams, in far different stages of their respective careers, have become signature stories in a tournament that had been begging for good stories.
The tournament began without some of the game’s biggest stars. Novak Djokovic was out with an elbow injury. Andy Murray wasn’t playing because of a hip injury. Serena Williams gave birth to her first child the other day.
So Tuesday’s 2-hour, 28-minute match between Stephens, the 24-year-old American, and the 16th-seeded Sevastova, a game 27-year-old from Latvia, was a microcosm of this tournament to date: Waiting for a signature moment.
And the match delivered.
“Oh, man,’’ Stephens said breathlessly at mid-court moments after the biggest win of her career. “I’m getting teary-eyed. This is just incredible. When I started my comeback at Wimbledon, I could have never even dreamed of something like this happening, having these results.’’
Stephens had surgery on her left foot in January and didn’t return to tournament play until Wimbledon in July. Her ranking fell to 934th before she reached consecutive semifinals at hard-court tournaments in Toronto and Cincinnati in August.
She’s currently ranked 83rd and is projected to elevate to No. 35 by virtue of her semifinal berth. Tuesday’s win was her 14th in her past 16 matches, and made her just the seventh player outside the top 50 to reach the U.S. Open women’s semifinals since the rankings began in 1975.
The crowd at Ashe felt the gravity of the moment and Stephens controlled her nerves just a bit better than Sevestova in the end.
“It was incredible,’’ Stephens said. “I couldn’t hear, like, anything, it was so loud in there. It was pretty awesome. My first match on Ashe. I mean, that’s what tennis players live for.’’
Even Sevastova, 20 minutes removed from defeat, was buzzing from the atmosphere she just had experienced — no matter that the entire place, outside her family and friends box, was rooting for her opponent. Perhaps had she worn the Giants football cap and Montauk T-shirt she donned at the post-match press conference onto the court for the start of play it would have coerced a few more fans to her side.
“I mean, it’s normal, it’s U.S. Open, she’s American, you have to understand that,’’ Sevastova said. “In the end of the match, it was so loud. I never played in such a loud stadium. You have to be there to have this feeling, I think. It’s tough to explain. You’re, like, alone and everybody is screaming. It’s an experience you never forget, I think, in your life.’’
Sevastova, who was coming off a fourth-round win over Maria Sharapova, played beautifully, changing pace against the stronger Stephens and sometimes confounding her with an arsenal of knee-buckling drop shots.
But in the end, showing a touch of class, Sevestova acknowledged Stephens was the better player.
“She had better nerves in the end,’’ she said. “She played amazing points in the end. She deserves it. Really, respect for her. I thought I had her somewhere in the beginning of the third [set]. I was in control. But she came back and played some great winners, and she was back. The crowd I think helped her a little bit, pushed her.’’
It was a crowd waiting for a moment and getting it from Stephens.
Sevastova just happened to be in the way, collateral damage to this U.S. Open’s signature moment to date.