Sabalenka, Aug 7: World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka earned a straight-sets win, 6-3, 6-4, over Shuai Zhang to advance to the round of 16 of the Canadian Open.<\/p>\n
With the win, Sabalenka improved to 25-1 on hard courts this season, becoming the fastest player to reach 25 hard-court wins in a season since Serena Williams in 2016. She’s also now 5-1 against Zhang at the WTA Tour level, winning their last five meetings \u2013 all in straight sets.<\/p>\n
While the World No. 1 never appeared in real danger of an upset, Zhang kept her under pressure throughout. Sabalenka even stared down a break point in the final game before wiping it away and taking the last three points to close out the win in straight sets, WTA reports.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka faces No. 16 seed Ekaterina Alexandrova next. She holds a narrow 5-4 edge in their head-to-head.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, two-time champion Jessica Pegula registered a 6-4, 6-0 win over Kamilla Rakhimova in a match that was delayed by rainfall.<\/p>\n
Pegula\u2019s third rounder in the Ontario capital marked her third match in four days, with her only day of rest being a travel day. However, the American saw the positives despite the minimal amount of preparation.<\/p>\n
The 32-year-old will next face Diana Shnaider exactly a week after beating the world No.17 in the Washington semis.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, after receiving a second-round walkover from Lanlana Tararudee, the No. 8 seed Amanda Anisimova took time to settle as she secured a gritty comeback 3-6, 6-0, 6-4 win over Nikola Bartunkova in 1 hour and 59 minutes.<\/p>\n
In the doubles draw, Gabriela Dabrowski and new partner Ekaterina Alexandrova lost their first-round match to Coco Gauff and Caty McNally. Sisters Leylah Annie and Bianca Jolie Fernandez received a wild card for the tournament but were ousted in the first round by Elise Mertens and Diana Shnaider, 6-1, 6-2.<\/p>\n
Fan favourite Alexandra Eala paired with Venus Williams in the doubles, but they were eliminated by Liudmila Samsonova and Miyu Kato in the first round.<\/p>\n
–IANS <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sabalenka, Aug 7: World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka earned a straight-sets win, 6-3, 6-4, over Shuai Zhang to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[217,17763,17764,4015,2142,2265,17762],"class_list":["post-47951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-aryna-sabalenka","tag-aryna-sabalenka","tag-doubles-exit","tag-for-pair","tag-last-16","tag-pegula","tag-sabalenka","tag-wins-for"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}