NEW YORK, Sept 6 \u2014 Defending champion Aryna Sabalenka subdued American Taylor Townsend 6-4 6-3 on Sunday to \u200breach the U.S. Open quarter-finals without dropping a set.<\/p>\n
The world number one had endured a frustrating build-up to the year’s final major but has hit her stride at \u200cFlushing Meadows and she slammed her foot on the gas in the second set against the home-crowd favourite, sealing victory with \u2060a backhand winner.<\/p>\n
She will next play the \u200bCzech Republic’s Wimbledon champion Linda Noskova.<\/p>\n
“What an incredible player \u2060she is approaching the net, what a great returner,” said Sabalenka. “Very brave, you can see \u200chow focused she was. It \u200cwas really challenging playing her, especially here.”<\/p>\n
Any expectation of a one-sided contest between \u2060the top-ranked Sabalenka and world number 96 Townsend quickly disappeared \u2060as they traded two breaks apiece in the opening four games at Arthur Ashe Stadium.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka broke with a backhand to the corner in the fifth game and again in the seventh, firing a forehand winner to seize the advantage, but Townsend responded immediately by breaking to love.<\/p>\n
The Belarusian held firm when it mattered, however, saving a break point with an \u200cunreturnable serve before closing out the opening set in the \u200b10th game.<\/p>\n
Townsend tamed Sabalenka’s fearsome serve to move 3-1 up in the second set but a double fault handed the break straight back and shifted the momentum decisively.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka then sprinted through the final four games to book her spot in the last eight.<\/p>\n
“Really aggressive style of the game. Serving really well, playing super fast,” said Sabalenka. “You’ve got to stay really low to be able to handle that power and energy.”<\/p>\n
A familiar opponent awaits in Noskova, whom \u200bSabalenka beat on the way to the Indian Wells title this year.<\/p>\n
The Belarusian is defending both her U.S. \u200cOpen crown and \u200cher world number \u2060one ranking in New York, with three other players still able to overtake her.<\/p>\n
She has repeatedly been asked about the pressure surrounding her bid to stay at the top but said she was shutting out the speculation.<\/p>\n
“I completely separate myself from that (conversation), because it’s just guessing. It’s like ‘if, if, \u200cif, if’. I feel like \u200bfor me, I’m just focusing on myself,” she told \u200creporters.<\/p>\n
“I’m just trying to bring \u2060my best tennis \u200bevery time I’m competing out there and basically fight for it.”<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Amy Tennery in New YorkEditing \u200bby Toby Davis)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK, Sept 6 \u2014 Defending champion Aryna Sabalenka subdued American Taylor Townsend 6-4 6-3 on Sunday to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2879,2878,2881,1796,2880,53,54,2883,2884,50,2882,28,2877,2885,2369],"class_list":["post-67830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-cars","tag-classifieds","tag-homes","tag-international","tag-jobs","tag-local","tag-news","tag-radio","tag-salt-lake","tag-sports","tag-television","tag-tennis","tag-traffic","tag-utah","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67830","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=67830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}