Pegula knocks 2025 champion Madison Keys out of Australian Open, faces Anisimova in quarterfinals

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Jessica Pegula knocked podcast pal and defending champion Madison Keys out of the Australian Open on Monday and moved into a quarterfinal against Amanda Anisimova, another all-American match.

Their fourth-round wins on Day 9 meant four Americans reached the women's singles quarterfinals in Australia for the first time since 2001, when Serena and Venus Williams, Jennifer Capriati, Monica Seles and Lindsay Davenport made it to the last 8.

“Sucks that one American has to go out in the quarterfinals,” Anisimova said of her next match against Pegula. “Jess is such a great player, so I’m sure it’s going to be a great battle.”

Pegula and Anisimova advanced a day after No. 3 Coco Gauff and 18-year-old Iva Jovic earned their places on the other side of the draw.

Pegula's 6-3, 6-4 win at Rod Laver Arena ended Keys' first Grand Slam title defense in a tough section of the draw.

Anisimova, runner-up at the last two majors in Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, advanced 7-6 (4), 6-4 over Wang Xinyu as the temperature started rising at Melbourne Park, and organizers triggered the heat stress policy which allowed for extra cooling breaks.

Pegula is into the quarterfinals for the fourth time in Australia but has never previously gone beyond that round at the season-opening major.

“I’ve been playing really well, seeing the ball, hitting the ball really well this whole tournament, and I wanted to stay true to that,” Pegula said. “Then just lean into a couple things that I felt like she would do, and I felt like I came out doing it pretty well."

Pegula and Keys had played three times previously, and Keys had won the last two. But on Monday it was Pegula who dominated, racing to 4-1 leads in both sets.

“I felt like if I didn’t hit a really good ball immediately, she was in charge of the points," Keys said. “I was kind of struggling to kind of get that dominance back.”

Pegula's best performance in a major was making the U.S. Open final in 2024, where she lost to Aryna Sabalenka. The top-ranked Sabalenka is aiming for a third title in four years.

Anisimova was getting frustrated toward the end of the second set, hitting herself with her racket when she missed a service return. She also damaged a shoe.

Just as the No. 4 seed was about to serve for the match, the tournament's heat stress index scale hit 4, which means extra cooling breaks are allowed after the second set in women's singles and third set in men's singles matches.

It didn't become a factor, with Anisimova closing with an ace to reach the Australian Open quarterfinals for the first time.

“What a battle out there. Tough conditions against a really good opponent,” she said. “There were a lot of fans from China today but, honestly, it made the atmosphere great.”

Lorenzo Musetti reached the quarterfinals for the first time in Australia with a 6-2, 7-5, 6-4 win over No. 9 Taylor Fritz.

The fifth-seeded Musetti has had a disrupted run, with one of his coaches and a physio having to return to Italy for personal reasons. He also had to leave his family behind after the birth in November of his second son.

“I feel more mature on the court. I’m playing better for that, and for them,” he said. “I didn’t get much sleep in the offseason. But we found a way to work and to practice really well on and off the court.

"Now it’s more than 20 days that I’m alone and it’s not easy, but I feel their presence also here.”

His next mission is against a rested Novak Djokovic. The 24-time major winner had been scheduled to be the feature night match at Rod Laver Arena on Monday but had a walkover into the quarterfinals after his opponent Jakub Mensik withdrew from their scheduled fourth-round match with an abdominal injury.

In night matches, second-ranked Iga Świątek was up against Australian Maddison Inglis, and the eighth-seeded man Ben Shelton faced Casper Ruud.

Lorenzo Musetti of Italy celebrates after defeating Taylor Fritz of the U.S. in their fourth round match at the Australian Open tennis championship in Melbourne, Australia, Monday, Jan. 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Asanka Brendon Ratnayake)

Wang Xinyu of China plays a backhand return to Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. during their fourth round match at the Australian Open tennis championship in Melbourne, Australia, Monday, Jan. 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin)

Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. plays a backhand return to Wang Xinyu of China during their fourth round match at the Australian Open tennis championship in Melbourne, Australia, Monday, Jan. 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

Jessica Pegula, left, of the U.S., is congratulated by her compatriot Madison Keys after winning their fourth round match at the Australian Open tennis championship in Melbourne, Australia, Monday, Jan. 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

Madison Keys of the U.S. plays a backhand return to her compatriot Jessica Pegula during their fourth round match at the Australian Open tennis championship in Melbourne, Australia, Monday, Jan. 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

Jessica Pegula of the U.S. plays a backhand return to her compatriot Madison Keys during their fourth round match at the Australian Open tennis championship in Melbourne, Australia, Monday, Jan. 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

Madison Keys of the U.S. reacts during her fourth round match against her compatriot Jessica Pegula at the Australian Open tennis championship in Melbourne, Australia, Monday, Jan. 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

Jessica Pegula of the U.S. plays a backhand return to her compatriot Madison Keys during their fourth round match at the Australian Open tennis championship in Melbourne, Australia, Monday, Jan. 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

So many things went wrong last Jan. 29 to contribute to the deadliest plane crash on American soil since 2001 that the National Transportation Safety Board isn't likely to identify a single cause of the collision between an airliner and an Army helicopter near Washington that killed 67 people at its hearing Tuesday.

Instead, their investigators will detail what they found that played a role in the crash, and the board will recommend changes to help prevent a similar tragedy. Last week, the Federal Aviation Administration already took the temporary restrictions it imposed after the crash and made them permanent to ensure planes and helicopters won't share the same airspace again around Reagan National Airport.

Family members of victims hope those suggestions won't be ignored the same way many past NTSB recommendations have been. Tim Lilley, whose son Sam was the first officer on the American Airlines plane, said he hopes officials in Congress and the administration will make changes now instead of waiting until for another disaster.

“Instead of writing aviation regulation in blood, let’s start writing it in data,” said Lilley, who is a pilot himself and earlier in his career flew Black Hawk helicopters in the Washington area. “Because all the data was there to show this accident was going to happen. This accident was completely preventable."

Over the past year, the NTSB has already highlighted a number of the factors that contributed to the crash including a poorly designed helicopter route past Reagan Airport, the fact that the Black Hawk was flying 78 feet (23.7 meters) higher than it should have been, the warnings that the FAA ignored in the years beforehand and the Army's move to turn off a key system that would have broadcast the helicopter’s location more clearly.

The D.C. plane crash was the first in a number of high-profile crashes and close calls throughout 2025 that alarmed the public, but the total number of crashes last year was actually the lowest since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020 with 1,405 crashes nationwide.

Experts say flying remains the safest way to travel because of all the overlapping layers of precautions built into the system, but too many of those safety measures failed at the same time last Jan. 29.

Here is some of what we have learned about the crash:

The route along the Potomac River the Black Hawk was following that night allowed for helicopters and planes to come within 75 feet (23 meters) of each other when a plane was landing on the airport's secondary runway that typically handles less than 5% of the flights landing at Reagan. And that distance was only ensured when the helicopter stuck to flying along the bank of the river, but the official route didn't require that.

Normally, air traffic controllers work to keep aircraft at least 500 feet (152 meters) apart to keep them safe, so the scant separation on Route 4 posed what NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy called “an intolerable risk to flight safety.”

The controllers at Reagan also had been in the habit of asking pilots to watch out for other aircraft themselves and maintain visual separation as they tried to squeeze in more planes to land on what the Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority has called the busiest runway in the country. The FAA halted that practice after the crash.

That night a controller twice asked the helicopter pilots whether they had the jet in sight, and the pilots said they did and asked for visual separation approval so they could use their own eyes to maintain distance. But at the investigative hearings last summer, board members questioned how well the crew could spot the plane while wearing night vision goggles and whether the pilots were even looking in the right spot.

The American Airlines plane flying from Wichita, Kansas, collided with the helicopter 278 feet (85 meters) above the river, but the Black Hawk was never supposed to fly above 200 feet (61 meters) as it passed by the airport, according to the official route.

Before investigators revealed how high the helicopter was flying, Tim Lilley was asking tough questions about it at some of the first meetings NTSB officials had with the families. His background as a pilot gave him detailed knowledge of the issues.

“We had a moral mandate because we had such an in-depth insight into what happened. We didn’t want to become advocates, but we could not shirk the responsibility,” said Lilley, who started meeting with top lawmakers in Congress, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Army officials not long after the crash to push for changes.

The NTSB has said the Black Hawk pilots may not have realized how high the helicopter was because the barometric altimeter they were relying on was reading 80 to 100 feet (24 to 30 meters) lower than the altitude registered by the flight data recorder.

Investigators tested out the altimeters of three other Black Hawks of the same model from the same Army unit and found similar discrepancies.

FAA controllers were warning about the risks all the helicopter traffic around Reagan airport created at least since 2022.

And the NTSB found there had been 85 near misses between planes and helicopters around the airport in the three years before the crash along with more than 15,000 close proximity events. Pilots reported collision alarms going off in their cockpits at least once a month.

Officials refused to add a warning to helicopter charts urging pilots to use caution when they used the secondary runway at Reagan the jet was trying to use before the collision.

Rachel Feres said it was hard to hear about all the known concerns that were never addressed before the crash that killed her cousin Peter Livingston and his wife Donna and two young daughters, Everly and Alydia, who were both promising figure skaters.

“It became very quickly clear that this crash should never have happened,” Feres said. “And as someone who is not particularly familiar with aviation and how our aviation system works, we were just hearing things over and over again that I think really, really shocked people, really surprised people.”

FILE - Rescue and salvage crews pull up a part of a Army Black Hawk helicopter that collided midair with an American Airlines jet, at a wreckage site in the Potomac River from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Feb. 6, 2025, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

FILE - Crosses are seen at a makeshift memorial for the victims of the plane crash in the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Jan. 31, 2025, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

FILE - A piece of wreckage is lifted from the water onto a salvage vessel near the site in the Potomac River of a mid-air collision between an American Airlines jet and a Black Hawk helicopter, at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Feb. 4, 2025, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)