Sabalenka was visibly frustrated with her performance on centre court, muttering to herself with her shoulders slumped during an uncharacteristically sloppy display.<\/p>\n
The 28-year-old had not been knocked out of a tournament in the round of 32 since the Qatar Open in February last year, and she looked set for a quick and clean victory after racing to the first set.<\/p>\n
But she failed in her bid for a first tournament victory in the Italian capital, with Cirstea facing Linda Noskova<\/a> in the next round after beating a woman at the top of the world rankings for the first time in her career.<\/p>\n Sabalenka also had to have a time out for what appeared to be a problem with her left hip, casting doubt on her fitness ahead of Roland Garros later this month.<\/p>\n Gauff through, Paolini out<\/p>\n French Open champion Coco Gauff<\/a> is still in the hunt after taking over two hours to beat Argentina’s Solana Sierra<\/a>\u00a05-7, 6-0, 6-4<\/a>.<\/p>\n Gauff has struggled on clay this season, with a last-16 exit in the Madrid Open coming after a disappointing run to the quarter-finals in Stuttgart.<\/p>\n Jasmine Paolini<\/a>‘s defence of her Italian Open title came to an early end after the home favourite was knocked out by Elise Mertens<\/a>,<\/p>\n Local favourite Paolini lost 4-6, 7-6(5), 6-3<\/a> to Mertens following an error-strewn performance.<\/p>\n The 30-year-old is set to drop out of the top 10 of the women’s world rankings after failing to reach the fourth round of a fourth consecutive tournament.<\/p>\n Her fate turned on her failure to capitalise on three match points against the serve at 6-5 in the second set, after which she lost the first two points of the tie-break and never recovered.<\/p>\n “I didn’t make the most of my chances. I needed to keep a clearer head, keep my cool better in those moments,” Paolini told reporters.<\/p>\n “I’m very disappointed to lose, but there were moments in which I felt good on the court, and I was competitive and positive.”<\/p>\n China’s Zheng Qinwen<\/a> is also out on the women’s side after losing to Jelena Ostapenko<\/a>, who won their clash 4-6, 6-4, 6-4<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sinner brushes\u00a0Ofner aside<\/p>\n Sinner<\/a> took to an expectant centre court later on Saturday as a hot favourite to extend his run of five consecutive Masters 1000 tournament victories.<\/p>\n Austria’s Sebastian Ofner<\/a> stood in the way of Sinner winning a 24th straight match, with few expecting anything more than a rapid victory in straight sets.\u00a0And that’s exactly what happened as the home hope won 6-3, 6-4 in just over 90 minutes<\/a>.<\/p>\n No Italian man has won at the Foro Italico since Adriano Panatta 50 years ago, and with Carlos Alcaraz<\/a> out of action, Sinner is expected to go one better than last year when he lost the final to his great rival.<\/p>\n Former winner Daniil Medvedev<\/a> will begin his campaign in the third round after his match, which was scheduled to be the first on centre court, was shelved when his opponent, Tomas Machac<\/a>, pulled out of the tournament with an unspecified illness.<\/p>\n Fourth seed Felix Auger-Aliassime<\/a> suffered a shock second-round defeat at the hands of Argentina’s Mariano Navone<\/a>, the Canadian losing to his 44th-ranked opponent in straight sets 7-6(4), 7-6(5)<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aryna Sabalenka became the second star name dumped out of the Italian Open when she suffered a shock…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[27],"class_list":{"0":"post-14512","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rome","8":"tag-rome"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Key](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/425d9c7f-e112-4a29-8065-d182605587c5.jpg\" "\\"Key")
Key match statsFlashscore<\/p>\n