Aryna Sabalenka advanced to the semifinals after a 6-4, 2-6, 6-3 victory over Jessica Pegula in a Riyadh round-robin match that lasted two hours and three minutes.

“She pushed me, and I love it,” Aryna Sabalenka said after beating Jessica Pegula 6-4, 2-6, 6-3 in their Riyadh round-robin match on Tuesday.

The result added another chapter to a one-sided overall rivalry: Sabalenka has won nine of their 12 meetings, seven of those in straight sets. Still, recent encounters have tightened. At the US Open, Pegula won a set for the first time in two years before Sabalenka prevailed 6-4 in the third. In Wuhan, Pegula ended a four-match skid against Sabalenka by winning a third-set tiebreak.

Both arrived in form. Pegula had beaten Coco Gauff and Sabalenka had beaten Jasmine Paolini in earlier matches in Riyadh. On Tuesday, Sabalenka captured the opening set by forcing errors and dictating enough points. Pegula answered in the second by stepping in, counter-punching and coming to the net.

“In the second set, she just stepped in and played incredible tennis,” Sabalenka said. “In the third set I was just thinking, ‘I’m gonna go after my shots. I’m gonna try to stay even more aggressive. Put that speed back with her and hope that I’ll get my chance.’”

Pegula threatened to take control early in the final set, breaking for 2-1 and appearing to move toward a 3-1 lead. Sabalenka reversed course with a series of aggressive returns, a forehand passing shot and decisive groundstrokes that produced multiple breaks and a run to 5-2 before sealing the win with a forehand winner.

“You know what,” Sabalenka said to herself, ‘I have nothing else to do, I’m just going as hard as I can, and heavy as I can, down the lines.”

Statistically the match was noisy: Sabalenka hit only two more winners than Pegula and made 19 more unforced errors, but she forced Pegula into 36 errors to 19. With a 2-0 record in the round-robin, Sabalenka has moved into the semifinals. For all her success, she has never won the WTA Finals and has reached the title match just once; this is the first season she has been No. 1 for the majority of the year.

The defending champion preserved her WTA Finals defence with a composed performance, defeating Jasmine Paolini 6-3, 6-2 to level her record in the Stefanie Graf Group at 1-1. The round-robin format, Gauff said, offers “another chance to prove yourself” if a player begins the tournament poorly, and she used Tuesday’s match to respond after a rocky start to the week.

Gauff arrived at the event having dropped her opener to Jessica Pegula in three sets, a match in which she produced 12 double faults and 45 unforced errors. Against Paolini she was far steadier: she served just three doubles, was broken once and closed the contest in one hour and 19 minutes. “I was just trying to play relaxed,” Gauff said after the victory.

The result eliminated Paolini from semifinal contention regardless of the later outcome between No. 1 seed Aryna Sabalenka and No. 5 seed Jessica Pegula. Gauff’s win also continued a reversal of recent head-to-head form. After losing her first three matches to Paolini this season, she has now won two straight meetings — first in Wuhan, and now in Riyadh. After beating Paolini in China, she won the title.

Gauff acknowledged the history of her early struggles at the year-end event. “I played a WTA Finals were I lost all three matches [in 2022], so I was determined to not make this a repeat of that. I knew that today’s win was important to keep myself in the tournament.” The victory kept her title defence alive, but it did not put qualification entirely in her hands.

She must await the conclusion of the Sabalenka-Pegula match to learn which scenarios against Sabalenka would send her through. The volatility of the round-robin phase is a defining feature of the WTA Finals and one that makes retaining the crown particularly challenging. Gauff is seeking to become just the fourth woman in the past 25 years to capture back-to-back year-end titles.

The Serena Williams Group at the WTA Finals has been narrowed to a single, decisive match: Amanda Anisimova and Iga Swiatek are both 1-1 in the round-robin, and the winner advances to the semifinals.

Monday’s action in Riyadh produced three-set comebacks by both Anisimova and Elena Rybakina. Rybakina has already clinched the group and will not be affected by her match with Madison Keys, leaving the Anisimova-Swiatek match as a straightforward win-and-in contest.

Swiatek arrived having lost to Rybakina 3-6, 6-1, 6-0, a reversal that saw her lose 15 of the last 18 games after taking the first set and accumulate 36 unforced errors in sets two and three combined. Rather than dwell on that result, the five-time WTA Finals participant and 2023 WTA Finals champion said she had no plans to “over-analyze” the defeat because “the tournament still goes on.”

“I’ll just focus on playing Amanda next, and that’s it,” she said. “Every match I play, I want to win, so I’ll just prepare and be ready.”

For Anisimova, this is her first appearance at the year-end championships. The two-time Grand Slam finalist rebounded from an opening loss to Rybakina, turning the corner against Madison Keys by winning 11 of the last 13 games after falling earlier by 6-3, 6-1. She said one of her main goals when she returned to the court was to “put up a fight today.”

That 48-hour turnaround leaves Anisimova buoyant ahead of her third meeting of the year with Swiatek. “Now it feels more like a real tournament, that you know if you win, you progress, and then if you lose, you’re out,” she said. “So yeah, [I’m] just looking forward to it, and hopefully I can give it my best shot.”

With Rybakina already through, the Serena Williams Group’s final order will be decided by this direct confrontation between Anisimova and Swiatek.