Jessica Pegula beat Iga Swiatek 7-5, 4-6, 6-4 in the Cincinnati semifinals, ending the defending champion's title defence in a match that ran close to three hours, according to Al Jazeera.

Pegula is the world number three. Swiatek had won her first title of 2026 in Toronto the week before.

The conditions were part of it

Pegula's own account of the match was less about tennis than about weather.

"Crazy match today," she said. "A lot of back and forth, a lot of breaks. Really windy, kind of odd conditions."

"A lot of breaks" is doing double duty in that sentence. There were breaks of serve, in a match where neither player held consistently, and there were breaks in play, with rain stopping it repeatedly. Both make a match harder to control, which is what she went on to say she was pleased about: "I was just really happy with the way I was able to kind of handle just a lot that was happening."

Gauff ends the run

Coco Gauff beat Sara Bejlek 6-4, 6-1 in the other semifinal.

That closes out the tournament's best story. Bejlek came in unseeded, beat the world number one Aryna Sabalenka in the fourth round, and then beat Madison Keys from a set down in the quarterfinals, which we reported on Friday. Against Gauff, who won here in 2023, she lost the second set 6-1.

Runs like that end abruptly more often than they end in finals, and there is no shame in the manner of it. Reaching the last four of a tournament of this size, unseeded, having removed the top-ranked player, is a considerable week.

Both finals are American

The women's final on Sunday night is Pegula against Gauff. It is followed by the men's final, which is Frances Tiafoe against Arthur Fils.

Tiafoe got there by beating Brandon Nakashima in an all-American semifinal, the outcome of another quarterfinal upset we covered: Nakashima, unseeded, had put out the sixth seed Taylor Fritz. Fils beat Flavio Cobolli 6-3, 6-4.

Fils described what the interruptions did to a semifinal: "You come on court more nervous because it's a semi-final. The rain arrives, you wait and conditions change completely."

Tiafoe's assessment of reaching the final was shorter, and we will paraphrase it: he said it felt extremely good.

What is not in the report

Seedings and world rankings are given for Pegula alone. The article does not state Swiatek's ranking or seeding, Gauff's ranking, or Bejlek's. We have not supplied any of them.

We verified this account from a single publication.