{"id":418367,"date":"2026-01-17T04:43:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T04:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/418367\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T04:43:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T04:43:07","slug":"anisimova-ready-to-embrace-extra-expectations-at-ao-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/418367\/","title":{"rendered":"Anisimova ready to embrace extra expectations at AO 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Anisimova begins her AO 2026 campaign with a first-time meeting with Swiss world No. 86 Simona Waltert, who is making her AO women\u2019s singles main draw debut. Should she survive that encounter, Katerina Siniakova and AO 2020 champion Sofia Kenin, the 27th seed, could await in the second and third rounds respectively.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ausopen.com\/draws#!womens-singles\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">MORE: AO 2026 women&#8217;s singles draw<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The fourth seed\u2019s projected fourth-round opponent is 13th seed Linda Noskova, while her slated quarterfinal adversary is countrywoman and sixth seed Jessica Pegula. Anisimova may then need to slay top seed and two-time AO champion Sabalenka and chase that victory with one in the final over either second seed Swiatek or third seed Coco Gauff to lay claim to the Daphne Akhurst Memorial Cup.<\/p>\n<p>Like any professional player, she\u2019s wary of counting chickens before they hatch.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt&#8217;s a new Grand Slam,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI&#8217;m just really taking it one match at a time \u2026 everyone is going to be very difficult to face here, but I&#8217;m looking forward to it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGoing into this year, I&#8217;m just thinking about how I can get that extra edge [and] improve as an athlete.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are expectations, but I use them as motivation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anisimova begins her AO 2026 campaign with a first-time meeting with Swiss world No. 86 Simona Waltert, who&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-418367","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}