First, Lyudmila Samsonova took on Iga Świątek.
She held her opening serve four times in the first set, combining power and finesse to toy with the world number one player, with her most powerful serve reaching 117 mph.
But Swiatek dominated from then on, and she lost just one more game with the match remaining.
She has been at the top of the U.S. Open before, winning the singles title in 2022, and Monday's 6-4, 6-1 victory in the round of 16 put Swiatek one step closer to replicating that challenge for the title.
The first step to closing the gap against Samsonova was to force a break, which she finally did late in the first set, winning four of five points to take a 5-4 lead.
She then won all four points and held serve to win the set, winning the first five sets of the second set.
In the final game, Samsonova needed to hold serve to avoid a looming match point, which she did, but Swiatek sealed the victory in the next game.
Her third ace set up a second match point, and when Samsonova's rally went out on a soft hit, that was enough for Swiatek.
Last year, this was a turning point in the Open, when Switek's encore attempt ended in an upset.
That was her loss to 20th-ranked Jelena Ostapenko, the only tournament in which she finished at the top of the draw, which resembled a hard-court anomaly compared to her other appearances at Queen's, when she finished in the round of 64, lost in the round of 32 and then reached the brink of a quarterfinal appearance in two subsequent rounds.
She returns to the women's singles final after a career filled with narrow misses in the semifinals, but on Wednesday she must beat sixth-seeded Jessica Pegula, who is looking to reach her first Grand Slam semifinal.
Second seed Aryna Sabalenka, who reached the final at last year's British Open and the semifinals in the two tournaments prior to that, is also still close behind.
But for one night, and then for a week, Swiatek weathered it all.
