U.S. Open: Leylah Fernandez fighting for her championship dream
Leylah Fernandez gets emotional after defeating Elina Svitolina in the quarterfinal match at the 2021 U.S. Open at Arthur Ashe Stadium on Tuesday. Credit: Errol Anderson
The coaching took place on the phone as it has since the beginning of last week.
Leylah Fernandez’s father and coach, Jorge, stayed home with her sister and hasn’t been in Queens to watch his daughter knock off one top ranked player after another.
Still, as the most important match of Fernandez’s life went to a third-set tiebreaker Tuesday, Fernandez thought back to the phone call she had with her father earlier in the day.
Today’s your first quarterfinals. Don’t make it your last. Don’t make it your last over here. Fight for your dreams.
Fight for your dreams. Fernandez could hear her father’s words as clearly as if he were sitting in the box next to her fitness coach and screaming mother.
And so, one day after turning 19, Fernandez did exactly that. Fernandez continued her dream run at the U.S. Open, with a 6-3, 3-6, 7-6 (5) win over No. 5 seed Elina Svitolina to earn a berth in the semifinals.
The Canadian lefthander becomes the youngest player to get this far in the women’s bracket since Maria Sharapova in 2005. Fernandez will play the winner of Tuesday night's match between No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka and No. 8 Barbora Krejcikova in the semifinals on Thursday.
Can Fernandez continue this dream run? Can a teenager ranked 73rd in the world actually become a U.S. Open champ? After Tuesday's win, it certainly seems possible.
The victory was the third straight over a seeded player. Fernandez first stunned fans when she knocked of defending champion Naomi Osaka in the third round. She followed that with a win over No. 16 Angelique Kerber.
Given that the No. 3 seeded Osaka has been going through some struggles this year, Svitolina was by far Fernandez’s toughest opponent of the tournament.
After winning a bronze medal at the Tokyo Olympics, the 26-year-old had won her 16th career title in Chicago a week before the U.S. Open. Heading into the match, she was on a nine-match winning streak and had not lost a set at the Open.
There wasn’t much in Fernandez’s background to indicate that this kind of deep Grand Slam run was imminent. Though she did win her first WTA title in Acapulco in March, her record against top-50 players this year was just 3-7 and she hadn’t advanced past the second round of the main draw in any of her last 11 tournaments.
The experience gap between the two was so wide it only made sense that Fernandez would be the one most likely to break under pressure, and there was plenty of pressure in the grueling match that lasted two hours and 24 minutes.
Instead, buoyed by a crowd that clearly wanted to see her win, Fernandez jumped on a rather stunned Svitolina, taking the first set. Svitolina adjusted her game and won the second.
The 68-minute final set had four service breaks as well as Svitolina coming back from a 2-5 deficit to even the match at 5-all. Both players held their final service to force the tiebreak. Fernandez again jumped out to take a 4-1 lead and Svitolina again came back to tie it at 5.
Fernandez then came up with her biggest shot of the match, a running forehand winner from the baseline. It clipped the top of the net before landing just inside the sideline. She then closed out the match on her serve that Svitolina hit long.
After the match, Fernandez called her father. "He told me I put him through hell and back with this match," she said. "He told me to enjoy the win and tomorrow we’ll go back to work."
The fight for her dreams continues.
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
