{"id":67486,"date":"2025-05-02T04:33:07","date_gmt":"2025-05-02T04:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/67486\/"},"modified":"2025-05-02T04:33:07","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T04:33:07","slug":"top-seed-sabalenka-powers-into-madrid-final-for-fourth-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/67486\/","title":{"rendered":"Top seed Sabalenka powers into Madrid final for fourth time"},"content":{"rendered":"

World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka continued her Mutua Madrid Open mastery with a 6-3, 7-5 semifinal victory over No. 17 seed Elina Svitolina at the Caja Magica on Thursday night.<\/p>\n

Sabalenka needed 1 hour and 32 minutes to hold off Svitolina, ending the Ukrainian’s undefeated clay-court run this year. Coming into Thursday’s match, Svitolina had gone 9-0 on clay at WTA events in 2025 (18-0 in sets), but Sabalenka put a stop to that streak.<\/p>\n

Madrid:\u00a0Draws<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>|\u00a0<\/strong>Scores<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>|<\/strong>\u00a0Order of play<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Marquee final lined up: <\/strong>Saturday’s final at this year’s first WTA 1000 clay-court event will pit Sabalenka against No. 4 seed Coco Gauff. Gauff dismissed defending champion<\/a> Iga Swiatek 6-1, 6-1 in just 64 minutes earlier on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Gauff has a narrow 5-4 lead over Sabalenka in their head-to-head. Gauff won their only prior clay-court meeting at 2021 Rome, and the American also won their most recent meeting, at the 2024 WTA Finals Riyadh.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Racking up the wins:<\/strong> Sabalenka has been the dominant force at the Mutua Madrid Open this decade. She is now 22-4 lifetime at the tournament, winning the title in 2021 and 2023, and reaching another final last year.<\/p>\n

Additionally, Sabalenka is now firmly ensconced as the tour leader in match-wins this year. By beating Svitolina, Sabalenka became the first player to obtain 30 main-draw wins at WTA events in 2025.<\/p>\n

Match moments: <\/strong>In the nightcap match on Court Manolo Santana, Sabalenka saw an early 4-1 lead dwindle, as Svitolina cracked a strong backhand return crosscourt to pull back on serve at 4-3.<\/p>\n

However, the Ukrainian had to stare down a trio of break points in the following game, and she double faulted on the third to quickly cede the advantage back to Sabalenka.<\/p>\n

Serving for the set at 5-3, Sabalenka hit two of her best serves and a backhand winner to erase three break points as well. Sabalenka fired her fourth ace of the day to reach set point, then slammed another unreturned serve to seal the one-set lead.<\/p>\n

By the time Sabalenka reached 5-3 in the second set, victory for the World No. 1 seemed to be an inevitability. Despite falling behind in a handful of her service games, Sabalenka had routinely gotten her way out of those jams.<\/p>\n

But that was not the case at 5-4, when she stumbled while serving for the match, and Svitolina got back to level footing. Svitolina\u2019s joy was short-lived, though, as Sabalenka crunched a backhand to break again for 6-5.<\/p>\n

Serving for the match again, Sabalenka would not make the same mistake twice. The top seed raced to 40-0, and she converted her second match point with one last error-forcing backhand.<\/p>\n

Once more this fortnight, Sabalenka was clutch when down break point, saving five of seven against Svitolina. Sabalenka has saved 39 break points at this event, the most a player has managed at a single WTA event this season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka continued her Mutua Madrid Open mastery with a 6-3, 7-5 semifinal victory over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4105],"tags":[79,1068,661,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-67486","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-text","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114436375053043451","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67486","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=67486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}