{"id":309745,"date":"2026-01-29T12:35:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T12:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/309745\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T12:35:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T12:35:07","slug":"australian-open-2026-aryna-sabalenka-to-face-elena-rybakina-in-melbourne-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/309745\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian Open 2026: Aryna Sabalenka to face Elena Rybakina in Melbourne final"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sabalenka asked for a video review but, with players unable to hear the audio, could only watch as Engzell replayed the footage and stayed with her decision.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Belarusian was unimpressed, aiming a sarcastic thumbs down at the umpire and offering a few choice words to her team, but she was able to reset quickly.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sabalenka subsequently broke Svitolina&#8217;s serve and then won four of the next five games to take the first set.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">After a dreadful service game handed an immediate second-set break to Svitolina, Sabalenka glared at her team, stomped to her seat and then broke back at the first opportunity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">She saved another break point on her way to a 5-2 lead before fittingly closing out victory with a forehand winner.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Discussing the hindrance call, Sabalenka said: &#8220;That&#8217;s actually never happened to me. I think it was the wrong call, but whatever. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It actually benefitted my game. I was more aggressive. So if she ever wants to do it again, I want to make sure that she&#8217;s not afraid to. Go ahead, call it. It&#8217;s going to help me.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sabalenka asked for a video review but, with players unable to hear the audio, could only watch as&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309746,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[18,19,17,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-309745","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}