{"id":102555,"date":"2025-05-15T04:11:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T04:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/102555\/"},"modified":"2025-05-15T04:11:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T04:11:10","slug":"zheng-stuns-sabalenka-to-reach-italian-open-semis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/102555\/","title":{"rendered":"Zheng stuns Sabalenka to reach Italian Open semis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Zheng<\/p>\n

Zheng Qinwen avenged her defeat by Aryna Sabalenka in the final of the 2024 Australian Open with victory in Rome [Getty Images]<\/p>\n

China’s Zheng Qinwen stunned world number one Aryna Sabalenka 6-4 6-3 to set up an Italian Open semi-final against Coco Gauff.<\/p>\n

Olympic champion Zheng, who had lost all six of her previous meetings with Sabalenka, broke the Belarusian’s serve to lead 3-2 before closing out the first set.<\/p>\n

The eighth seed then made the crucial break in Sabalenka’s\u00a0first\u00a0service\u00a0game of the second set to open a route to victory.<\/p>\n

Sabalenka made impressive holds in the fifth\u00a0and\u00a0seventh\u00a0games\u00a0of\u00a0the\u00a0set, but 22-year-old Zheng held on to secure her first semi-final appearance of the season.<\/p>\n

“It’s\u00a0been\u00a0a\u00a0long\u00a0time\u00a0I\u00a0haven’t\u00a0arrived\u00a0in\u00a0semi-finals,” Zheng told Sky Sports.<\/p>\n

“It\u00a0was\u00a0not\u00a0easy\u00a0for\u00a0me\u00a0because\u00a0at\u00a0the\u00a0beginning\u00a0of\u00a0the\u00a0year\u00a0I\u00a0got\u00a0some struggle with my arm.<\/p>\n

“So\u00a0right\u00a0now\u00a0I’m\u00a0just\u00a0perfectly\u00a0in\u00a0shape\u00a0and\u00a0trying\u00a0to\u00a0play\u00a0better\u00a0tennis\u00a0all\u00a0the time.”<\/p>\n

Gauff had earlier defeated Russian teenager Mirra Andreeva in straight sets to march into the last four.<\/p>\n

The 21-year-old American, who breezed past Britain’s Emma Raducanu<\/a> on Monday, continued her impressive run on clay with a 6-4 7-6 (7-5) victory against seventh seed Andreeva.<\/p>\n

Former French Open finalist Gauff is guaranteed to become the new number two in the world rankings, overtaking Iga Swiatek, after hitting a rich vein of form on clay to win nine of her past 10 matches.<\/p>\n

“A lot of confidence heading into the semi-finals. I think today some points weren’t played at my best, but I still managed to be successful,” said Gauff, who has reached the semi-finals in Madrid for the third time.<\/p>\n

Andreeva let her frustrations boil over at 3-3 in the opening set, hurling her racquet to the floor and waving angrily at her team after sending a forehand into the net.<\/p>\n

The 18-year-old recovered to break back immediately as Gauff opened up a 5-3 lead, but she was unable to hold serve again as her opponent wrapped up the set.<\/p>\n

She looked in danger of letting the match slip away at the start of the second, dropping serve before regaining her focus to fight back and force a tie-break.<\/p>\n

However, it was the 2023 US Open champion who edged it as Andreeva sent a backhand long to gift Gauff victory after one hour and 42 minutes.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zheng Qinwen avenged her defeat by Aryna Sabalenka in the final of the 2024 Australian Open with victory…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[35772,4723,6740,18388,47371,198,79,1068,16,15,47370],"class_list":{"0":"post-102555","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-aryna-sabalenka","9":"tag-australian-open","10":"tag-coco-gauff","11":"tag-mirra-andreeva","12":"tag-semi-finals","13":"tag-sky-sports","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-tennis","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-zheng-qinwen"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114509898357323760","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}