World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka made quick work of qualifier Polina Iatcenko on Wednesday, winning 6-1, 6-1 to reach the US Open third round and extend her winning streak in New York to 15 matches.<\/p>\n
US Open:\u00a0Scores<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Order of play<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Draws<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The two-time defending champion needed just 54 minutes to move through a match in which her pace and power proved too much for Iatcenko to handle. Sabalenka will play Uzbekistan\u2019s Kamilla Rakhimova on Friday in their fourth meeting; she leads the head-to-head 3-0.<\/p>\n From the outset, Sabalenka\u2019s pace gave Iatcenko little room to settle into only her second Grand Slam main-draw match — and second tour-level main draw overall. Sabalenka quickly built a double-break lead, attacking Iatcenko\u2019s second serve for winners on both break points, first with her backhand and then her forehand. She finished with six breaks of serve, three in each set.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n “I’m happy with my level. I’ve been working really hard, but I feel like I’m kind of moving away from trying to be perfect on court,” Sabalenka said. “I know that you cannot be perfect, and I’m just trying to work with what I have right now.<\/p>\n “I’m pretty happy with the level. I’m happy with my focus. I’m happy that I’m able to focus on myself no matter what and being consistent with my focus.”<\/p>\n Iatcenko\u2019s brightest moment of the 24-minute opening set came 21 minutes in. She needed two game points to get on the scoreboard at 1-5, drawing encouragement from the light Arthur Ashe crowd. Similar applause greeted her when she broke Sabalenka in the second set, though she still trailed 3-1.<\/p>\n Despite the lopsided defeat, Iatcenko, 22, leaves New York with much to be proud of by reaching the second round of her first Grand Slam main draw with a memorable 4-6, 6-4, 7-6 [10-7] win over Renata Zarazua. The match was 3 hours and 27 minutes, the eighth longest on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz this season.\u00a0<\/p>\n By the numbers, here’s a summary of Sabalenka’s Wednesday evening against Iatcenko:\u00a0<\/p>\n 8:\u00a0<\/strong>Sabalenka was efficient when closing the points at the net, converting 8-of-11 for a 73% success rate.<\/p>\n 12:<\/strong> By the time Iatcenko had recorded her first winner — a service winner — Sabalenka had already amounted 12 winners. In total, Sabalenka finished with 24 winners to Iatcenko’s three.\u00a0<\/p>\n 13:<\/strong> Against qualifiers at majors, Sabalenka now boasts a 13-0 record and all of those wins have come in straight sets. Across the WTA Tour, she has won her last 25 matches vs. qualifiers and lucky losers, last losing to Donna Vekic at San Diego in 2022.<\/p>\n 15:\u00a0<\/strong>Dating back to the 2024 US Open, Sabalenka has won 15 consecutive matches at the US Open.\u00a0<\/p>\n 23:<\/strong> She has won her last 23 Grand Slam second round matches.\u00a0<\/p>\n 30:<\/strong> Sabalenka is now 30-2 at the US Open in matches where she wins the first set. The last time she lost a match in New York after winning the first set was the 2023 final vs. Coco Gauff.\u00a0<\/p>\n 66: <\/strong>Iatcenko lost two-thirds of her points on her serve as Sabalenka won 16-of-24 of Iatcenko’s first-service points and 14-of-21 of her second-service points.<\/p>\n 107: <\/strong>This was Sabalenka’s 107th main-draw match win since the start of the decade, with only Iga Swiatek holding a slight advantage (109) for most.<\/p>\n “I can definitely say that mentally I’m way stronger than I was in the middle of the season, and physically I also feel stronger,” Sabalenka added. “I feel like I’m on my level of play, and I just want to, you know, bring the right focus on the match every time.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka made quick work of qualifier Polina Iatcenko on Wednesday, winning 6-1, 6-1 to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1183625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4105],"tags":[79,1068,661,16,15],"class_list":["post-1183624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-text","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117205138613286628","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183624","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=1183624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1183625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1183624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1183624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1183624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}