Americans Sloane Stephens and Madison Keys will meet in the French Open women’s singles semifinals on Thursday in Paris, the first all-American French Open semifinal since 2002, when Serena Williams beat defending champion Jennifer Capriati to win the first of her four consecutive major singles titles.
Stephens, seeded 10th at Roland Garros, defeated 14th-seeded Russian Daria Kasatkina, 6-3, 6-1, in Tuesday’s quarterfinals, hours after the 13th-seeded Keys beat unseeded Yulia Putintseva, of Kazakhstan, 7-6(5), 6-4.
The quarterfinal wins came with superlatives for each player:
- Stephens, 25, will now become the No. 1 American in the WTA rankings on Monday. Since January 29, 2007, only three women — Serena and Venus Williams and Bethanie Mattek-Sands — have held the American No. 1 WTA ranking. Either Serena (519 weeks) or Venus (67 weeks) have held the top American ranking for 586 of the last 592 weeks.
- Keys, at 23 years, 113 days old, became the youngest American to reach the French Open semifinals since Serena in 2003 (21 years, 255 days).
