Second seed Aryna Sabalenka will face 17th seed Madison Keys in the semifinal of the 2023 US Open. The match will be played on Thursday, September 7, 2023.

Aryna Sabalenka is the player to beat. The soon-to-be World No. 1 breezed into her third straight semifinal at the US Open, dismissing China’s rising star Qinwen Zheng 6-1, 6-4. That has been the story of the tournament so far for Sabalenka, or at least for the season, where she has been the most dominant player on Tour, and WTA Race can attest to that. She has the most points of any player this season and she could win the most Slams in 2023 of any woman. Two more hurdles remain, but if her consistent serving and line-painting offense continue to shine, it will be tough to see Madison Keys being too much of a hindrance here.

Madison Keys returned to her first US Open semifinal since 2018. The former finalist has defied the odds to make it at the far end of this year’s tournament, but Keys has invariably been perennial threat on hard courts and her game clicked into place during the fortnight. Her comeback win over Liudmila Samsonova convivned me she was going to be here for the long haul, and she backed up that win by knocking off Jessica Pegula and Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova dropping a combined nine games in those two matches.

It is Aryna Sabalenka who leads Madison Keys 2-1 in their head-to-head, winning their most recent clash in the quarterfinals of Wimbledon. Keys will look to avenge that loss on home territory and it will be interesting to see how Sabalenka handles the near-partisan crowd. This will be heavyweight contest – two of the WTA’s most devastating ball strikers going for the kill. Keys has the power to match, especially from the forehand, but she doesn’t have the same speed of shot from her backhand. In addition, Sabalenka has a better and a more reliable serve than Keys, and if the American continues to give away break points on a plate (as she did in her semifinal), that won’t go unpunished against a clinical Sabalenka. We’re backing the Belarusian to cruise into the her second Grand Slam final.