{"id":16818,"date":"2025-08-16T12:05:40","date_gmt":"2025-08-16T12:05:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=16818"},"modified":"2025-08-16T12:05:40","modified_gmt":"2025-08-16T12:05:40","slug":"sabalenka-and-gauff-crash-out-in-cincinnati-as-alcaraz-survives-to-reach-semis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=16818","title":{"rendered":"Sabalenka and Gauff crash out in Cincinnati as Alcaraz survives to reach semis"},"content":{"rendered":"
World number one Aryna Sabalenka and second-ranked Coco Gauff were sent crashing out of the ATP-WTA Cincinnati Open on Friday as Carlos Alcaraz fought off a fierce challenge from Andrey Rublev to reach the semi-finals.<\/p>\n

Top seed and defending champion Sabalenka had no answer for Elena Rybakina, falling to the 2022 Wimbledon champion 6-1, 6-4.<\/p>\n

Reigning French Open champion Gauff had 16 double faults in a 2-6, 6-4, 6-3 exit at the hands of seventh-seeded Italian Jasmine Paolini.<\/p>\n

Spain’s second-ranked Alcaraz had his difficulties, but he broke Rublev in the final game of a tense duel to emerge a 6-3, 4-6, 7-5 winner and will face third-seeded Alexander Zverev, who brought fifth-seeded Toronto champion Ben Shelton’s run to an end with a 6-2, 6-2 victory.<\/p>\n

Zverev earned a 4-1 lead in the second set as Shelton angrily tossed his racquet on the changeover, and the 2021 champion polished off the win on a second match point. He now has 24 hours to try to get fit.<\/p>\n

“I’m not feeling too great now, but I have a day to get fresh,” Zverev said. “I hope to be at 100%.<\/p>\n

“I’m not sure what happened. I felt very well, but at the end of the first set, it got progressively worse. But I’ll do all I can to give it a shot tomorrow.”<\/p>\n

Alcaraz was broken while serving for victory at 5-4 in the final set against 11th-ranked Rublev, but he found his focus and used his trademark grit to come through three games later.<\/p>\n

He sealed the triumph as an emotional Rublev hit an eighth double-fault on match point.<\/p>\n

“I maintained the positive thoughts even if I lost focus a bit in the second set,” said Alcaraz, whose five titles so far this year include the French Open as well as Masters 1000 trophies in Monte Carlo and Rome.<\/p>\n

Rybakina fired 11 aces en route to a fifth career victory over Sabalenka in 12 meetings.<\/p>\n

She avenged a loss to the Belarusian in Berlin two months ago and booked a semi-final meeting with Wimbledon champion Iga Swiatek — a 6-3, 6-4 winner over Anna Kalinskaya.<\/p>\n

Rybakina was aided by 11 aces as she reached her first Cincinnati semi-final.<\/p>\n

“I’m happy with the serve. It was the key today,” Rybakina said. “I served really well.”<\/p>\n

“If she had been serving well, it would have been a totally different match,” she acknowledged.<\/p>\n

Rybakina has won her last three matches against Swiatek, all played this season.<\/p>\n

But Swiatek was feeling confident after downing Kalinskaya in what she called “the best match I played here.”<\/p>\n

“I’m happy that I’m progressing during the tournament,” Swiatek said.<\/p>\n

Gauff, the 2023 Cincinnati champion, had looked well on her way after a quick first set against Paolini.<\/p>\n

But her mistakes caught up with her as she was broken eight times by the Italian, who overcame plenty of errors of her own as well as a twisted ankle suffered early in the third set.<\/p>\n

“It was so tough at the start, I was running and trying to put the ball inside the court,” Paolini said. “I started to feel the ball better.”<\/p>\n

“I fought for every point and stayed in the match,” added the Italian, who will face Veronika Kudermetova for a place in the final.<\/p>\n

Kudermetova crushed Varvara Gracheva 6-1, 6-2.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

World number one Aryna Sabalenka and second-ranked Coco Gauff were sent crashing out of the ATP-WTA Cincinnati Open on Friday as Carlos Alcaraz fought off a fierce challenge from Andrey Rublev to reach the semi-finals. Top seed and defending champion Sabalenka had no answer for Elena Rybakina, falling to the 2022 Wimbledon champion 6-1, 6-4. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16818\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}