(Photo credit: Aaron Doster-Imagn Images)<\/p>\n
Aryna Sabalenka is heading into her U.S. Open title defense riding a slump that continued Wednesday in Mason, Ohio.<\/p>\n
The top seed was knocked out of the Cincinnati Open in the fourth round, falling 7-6 (7), 6-4 to the Czech Republic’s Sara Bejlek.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka, a 28-year-old Belarusian, has failed to reach the quarterfinals in her past three events, starting with a fourth-round loss at Wimbledon.<\/p>\n
Since winning three of her first four events this year, with her lone defeat coming in the Australian Open final, Sabalenka has made just one semifinal — which she lost to Jessica Pegula in Berlin.<\/p>\n
Bejlek, meanwhile, recorded her first-ever win over a No. 1-ranked player. The 20-year-old couldn’t convert a set point on Sabalenka’s serve at 5-6 in the first set, then needed three more set points to close out the tiebreaker.<\/p>\n
Bejlek fell behind 4-1 in the second set but broke Sabalenka’s serve twice while sweeping the last five games.<\/p>\n
‘I feel incredible,’ Bejlek said postmatch. ‘I lost totally my words. I just keep believing, and that was the key today. She played amazing tennis and I was just believing, keep fighting and I was just trying my best and that’s it.’<\/p>\n
Bejlek’s quarterfinal opponent will be 20th-seeded Madison Keys, who downed Xiyu Wang 7-6 (3), 6-4 in the fourth round.<\/p>\n
Earlier Wednesday, defending champion Iga Swiatek won her ninth straight match without much resistance, beating France’s Diane Parry 6-3, 6-3 to reach the quarterfinals.<\/p>\n
The No. 7 seed actually lost the first game of the match on her serve but then won the next four to take command of the opening set. She similarly fell behind 1-0 in the second but rallied for a 4-1 lead and clinched the victory on her fourth match point.<\/p>\n
The six-time Grand Slam champion from Poland was strong on her first serve, winning 71.1% of those points, and opportunistic on Parry’s second serve, winning 17 of 28 such points (60.7%).<\/p>\n
With this victory, Swiatek has made at least the quarterfinal round for the seventh time in 12 tournaments she’s played this season.<\/p>\n
‘It’s always nice to hear that,’ Swiatek said when informed of this statistic after the match. ‘ … It doesn’t matter if it’s a quarterfinal or a second round, I treat every match the same way. But I know my Wikipedia is going to look good. The key is to focus on being present, and that’s how you can get to those numbers.’<\/p>\n
In order to return to the Cincinnati semifinals, Swiatek will have a tougher test in the next round against No. 2 seed Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan, who beat No. 14 seed Russian Diana Shnaider 6-4, 6-4. It’ll be a rematch of last week’s National Bank Open in Toronto, which Swiatek won 6-2, 6-3.<\/p>\n
No. 10 Marta Kostyuk of Ukraine recovered from a slow start in her 4-6, 6-0, 6-2 triumph over No. 5 Mirra Andreeva of Russia.<\/p>\n
Kostyuk didn’t manage a single break-point chance in the first set but converted four of six over the final two sets. The win was her eighth of the season against a top-10 opponent, tied with Rybakina and Elina Svitolina for the most this season.<\/p>\n
In addition to Keys, three seeded Americans also advanced to the quarterfinals. No. 3 Jessica Pegula needed just over two hours to come away with a 6-2, 4-6, 7-5 victory over No. 15 Sorana Cirstea of Romania, while No. 9 Amanda Anisimova took care of No. 6 Czech Linda Noskova 6-1, 6-4 in just 68 minutes. No. 4 Coco Gauff cruised past No. 22 Marie Bouskova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 6-2.<\/p>\n
–Field Level Media<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Photo credit: Aaron Doster-Imagn Images) Aryna Sabalenka is heading into her U.S. Open title defense riding a slump…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[217,2380,20281,20278,17271,20280,7482,20276,20279,20277],"class_list":["post-54077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-aryna-sabalenka","tag-aryna-sabalenka","tag-events","tag-opponent","tag-played","tag-points","tag-season","tag-seeded","tag-swiatek-won","tag-the-fourth","tag-top-seed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54077","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=54077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}