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The top seeds are dropping like flies in the women’s draw.
Two more highly ranked players — No. 3 Jessica Pegula and No. 5 Ons Jabeur — bowed out Monday, leaving only second-seeded Aryna Sabalenka and No. 6 Coco Gauff left among the top-eight seeds.
It was a rocky U.S. Open for Jabeur, who dropped sets in two of her first three matches, and was outclassed by No. 23 Qinwen Zheng, 6-2, 6-4 in the fourth round at Louis Armstrong Stadium.
Earlier in the tournament, Jabeur complained of an illness.
Zheng, who needed just an hour and 22 minutes to advance, is into the first quarterfinal of a Grand Slam in her career after this one-sided victory.
She broke Jabeur’s serve six times and was dominant at the net, winning 10 of 14 points.
“I just feel super happy and excited to play in a big stadium,” Zheng said in her on-court interview. “Ons is a fantastic player and she’s really tough to beat. She has a lot of variation. … That was a really impressive win for me today. Thank you to all the fans.”
Zheng will face the winner of Sabalenka/No. 13 Daria Kasatkina on Wednesday.
Peyton Stearns began to feel it Sunday.
The pressure. The excitement. The nerves.
Ultimately, the anxiety of the 21-year-old playing in the first fourth-round match in a major of her career got to her.
“I’ve always dreamed about this my whole life, so it kicks in,” the unseeded American said after she fell in three sets to No. 9 Czech Marketa Vondrousova, 6-7 (3), 6-3, 6-2, on Monday. “I was forcing my body into overdrive and started getting fatigued quickly. When I’m not moving, I can’t hit my shots the way I wanted to.”
Stearns, who turned pro last summer after winning an NCAA title at Texas, was a major surprise at the Open.
She won her first three matches without dropping a set, and was the first player to take a set off Vondrousova, the Wimbledon champion, in this tournament.
But her serve let her down — Stearns’ first-serve percentage was 57 percent and she committed eight double faults — and she began making too many mistakes.
Stearns was broken seven times and committed 52 unforced errors, far too many to beat someone of Vondrousova’s ilk.
She saved five break points in the opening game of the third set, but eventually was broken and never really recovered.
“There’s a lot of positives, I think,” said Stearns, who moved up to No. 44 in the live rankings Monday. “Definitely it’s not fun to lose. But I think it creates kind of that fire [in me]. I’m early in my career. I’m ready to go into the next tournament guns blazing.”
Carlos Alcaraz, the No. 1 seed on the men’s side, had little trouble with unseeded Italian Matteo Arnaldi, moving on to the quarterfinals with a 6-3, 6-3, 6-4 victory at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
The Spaniard has reached the final eight in his last three majors and four of the previous five.
Alcaraz will meet the winner of No. 6 Jannik Sinner/No. 12 Alexander Zverev on Wednesday. … Russian Andrey Rublev dropped a set in his third consecutive match, but moved on to the quarterfinals with a 6-3, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 victory over Brit Jack Draper.
The eighth-seeded Rublev has advanced this far nine times at a Grand Slam, but has never gotten farther.
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