NEW YORK — Back in January, when Aryna Sabalenka was winning a second consecutive Australian Open title, Jessica Pegula was bowing out in the second round with a straight-set loss against someone ranked 51st.

It wasn’t the first setback for Pegula, of course. There have been many of those through the years, from assorted injuries to difficult-to-digest defeats. Look at her now, though: On Saturday, the No. 6-seeded Pegula will face No. 2 Sabalenka for the championship at the U.S. Open.

“If you would have told me at the beginning of the year I’d be in the finals of the U.S. Open, I would have laughed so hard, because that just was where my head was — not thinking that I would be here,” Pegula, a 30-year-old American, said Thursday night after coming back to earn her first shot at a Grand Slam trophy with a 1-6, 6-4, 6-2 victory over Karolina Muchova in the semifinals at Flushing Meadows.

It hasn’t exactly always been a smooth ride for Pegula, the oldest U.S. woman in the Open era, which began in 1968, to reach her first major singles final.

There was, for example, a 2013 knee problem that required surgery. And a hip operation that sidelined Pegula for more than half of 2017, leaving her ranking outside the top 850 and forcing her to work her way back up via lower-tour events. This season, a rib injury kept her out of action for two months, sidelining her for the French Open. On the court, there was a seven-match Grand Slam losing streak that ended in New York in 2020. And an 0-6 record in major quarterfinals until this week, when she outplayed No. 1 Iga Swiatek, a five-time Slam champion, at that stage.

“But, I think, in the end, I always would kind of snap back and be, like, ‘OK, what am I talking about?’ I would always kind of flip the script a little bit, and I have always been good at doing that. That’s why I’ve always been able to come back from different challenges even better than before,” Pegula said. “Honestly, I’ve always felt, like, not that it was never going to happen — I almost think the opposite. I always felt like: ‘You know what? You’ll figure it out eventually.’”

Sinner reaches the men’s final: Top-ranked Jannik Sinner finished off a 7-5, 7-6 (3), 6-2 victory over Jack Draper to reach his first final at the U.S. Open — and second at a Grand Slam tournament this year — after they simultaneously received treatment from trainers on a humid afternoon Friday.

Sinner, a 23-year-old from Italy who was exonerated in a doping case less than a week before the tournament began, needed his left wrist massaged at a changeover after falling during a point he managed to win late in the second set. During the same break, the 25th-seeded Draper, a 22-year-old from Britain, got medical attention after vomiting twice on the court between points.

Sinner won the Australian Open in January and will seek his second major championship on Sunday against No. 12 Taylor Fritz or No. 20 Frances Tiafoe. The Fritz-Tiafoe match was not finished in time for this edition.