withdrawing<\/a> from her match in Madrid on Saturday. \u201cI\u2019ve been feeling terrible.\u201d<\/p>\nCilic couldn\u2019t play his match against Jo\u00e3o Fonseca on Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, I got food poisoning,\u201d Cilic said. \u201cAfter trying to recover all night my body is unfortunately exhausted and not at the proper level to get into the battle.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sabalenka rallies<\/p>\n
Sabalenka rebounded from a set and a break down against Osaka in their fourth round contest.<\/p>\n
She prevailed against No. 15 Osaka 6-7 (1), 6-3, 6-2 in 2 hours, 20 minutes to reach the quarterfinals and stay on track to defend her title.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh my God, that was an incredible level,\u201d Sabalenka said. \u201cShe played incredible tennis. I feel like I just got lucky in a couple of shots in the third set, that\u2019s why it went that fast. I\u2019m happy she brought that fight, I had to fight through to level up my game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sabalenka won her 15th straight match and advanced to her 17th consecutive quarterfinal. She hasn\u2019t lost before that round since February 2025 in Dubai. The Belarusian said her team kept pushing her to \u201ckeep fighting, keep going.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really happy that I didn\u2019t give up and I was pushing until the very last point,\u201d Sabalenka said.<\/p>\n
Longest tiebreaker since 2024<\/p>\n
Sabalenka will next face American Hailey Baptiste, who defeated Belinda Bencic 6-1, 6-7 (14), 6-3 after losing the second set in the longest tour-level regular tiebreaker since 2024, according to the WTA.<\/p>\n
Baptiste broke the racket on her leg in frustration after the loss in a set in which she wasted six match points, including five during the tiebreaker.<\/p>\n
The 32nd-ranked American was able to rebound and clinch the victory in 2 hours, 42 minutes.<\/p>\n
Rybakina\u2019s line-calling frustration<\/p>\n
World No. 2 Elena Rybakina lost in straight sets to lucky loser Anastasia Potapova in a Monday night match.<\/p>\n
Rybakina said on Sunday she had no trust in the electronic line-calling system in Madrid. She complained to the chair umpire after her opponent, Zheng Qinwen, was awarded an ace in the second set. Rybakina said the mark on the court was out. The umpire refused to inspect the mark and backed the system. Rybakina eventually won in three sets on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell with this thing, I won\u2019t trust it at all,\u201d Rybakina said. \u201cBecause there was no mark even close to what the TV showed.\u201d<\/p>\n
She felt it was a similar situation to what happened to men\u2019s player Alexander Zverev last year in Madrid, where he ended up grabbing his cell phone and taking a photo of a mark of an alleged wrong call. Zverev was warned for unsportsmanlike conduct.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t not see it,\u201d Rybakina said. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of a stolen point. I understand it was her serve and she was serving really well, but it\u2019s really frustrating.\u201d<\/p>\n
J\u00f3dar only Spaniard left<\/p>\n
Daniel M\u00e9rida lost to Stefanos Tsitsipas 6-4, 6-2 and Alejandro Davidovich Fokina lost to defending champion Casper Ruud 6-3, 6-1 on Monday, leaving 19-year-old Rafael J\u00f3dar as the only Spaniard left in the tournament.<\/p>\n
J\u00f3dar, one of the promising stars on tour, needed three sets to get past Fonseca, another teen sensation.<\/p>\n
World No. 2 Carlos Alcaraz, Spain\u2019s current top player, withdrew from the home tournament because of a right wrist injury.<\/p>\n
Unusual rally<\/p>\n
There was an unusually long rally in the Rudd vs. Davidovich Fokina match when the Spaniard resorted to 15 straight lob shots to the back of the court.<\/p>\n
The high returns in the 32-shot rally kept Rudd from attacking until one shot came up a little short and allowed him to power a forehand and take the point.<\/p>\n
In the match between Francisco Cerundolo and Luciano Darderi, Cerundolo won a point after reaching over the net to get to a high return that spun back into Darderi\u2019s side of the court. Cerundolo won the match 6-2, 6-3.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP tennis: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/tennis<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MADRID (AP) \u2014 Tennis players are facing an unknown opponent at the Madrid Open. A stomach virus or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13002,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[3081,7807,5064,5542,6349,710,1425,7243,7808,5543,7454,7023,6351,7246,7456,82,5897,7083,6693,7809,7249,396,6330,317],"class_list":{"0":"post-13001","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-madrid","8":"tag-alejandro-davidovich-fokina","9":"tag-alexander-zverev","10":"tag-anastasia-potapova","11":"tag-aryna-sabalenka","12":"tag-belinda-bencic","13":"tag-carlos-alcaraz","14":"tag-casper-ruud","15":"tag-coco-gauff","16":"tag-daniel-mrida","17":"tag-elena-rybakina","18":"tag-francisco-cerundolo","19":"tag-hailey-baptiste","20":"tag-iga-swiatek","21":"tag-linda-noskova","22":"tag-luciano-darderi","23":"tag-madrid","24":"tag-marin-cilic","25":"tag-naomi-osaka","26":"tag-qinwen-zheng","27":"tag-rafael-jdar","28":"tag-sorana-cirstea","29":"tag-sports","30":"tag-stefanos-tsitsipas","31":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13001\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}