{"id":57943,"date":"2025-08-10T15:50:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T15:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/57943\/"},"modified":"2025-08-10T15:50:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T15:50:09","slug":"aryna-sabalenka-makes-odd-demand-before-facing-emma-raducanu-tennis-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/57943\/","title":{"rendered":"Aryna Sabalenka makes odd demand before facing Emma Raducanu – Tennis – Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"

World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka<\/a> has called for a bigger dining room at the Cincinnati Open, despite being impressed with the tournament’s recent upgrades.<\/p>\n

Sabalenka overcame an early challenge to defeat Marketa Vondrousova 7-5, 6-1 in her second-round match and is set to<\/a> face Emma Raducanu<\/a> in a rematch of their Wimbledon<\/a> clash.<\/p>\n

However, the 27-year-old believes that if she is to progress further in the tournament, an upgrade to the facilities, specifically a larger dining area, is necessary due to the large number of players participating in the Cincinnati Open.<\/p>\n

During her on-court interview, Sabalenka expressed her initial confusion upon returning to the revamped tournament, saying: “The first time I came back, I was like, ‘Where am I?’ It’s a completely different tournament, it’s an impressive job done. Just wow. Everything is so confusing! Little by little I’m getting used to it.”<\/p>\n

She then humorously requested: “My only request is that next year we make the dining room a bit bigger. There are so many people and so little tables, please! Next year let’s make sure there’s more space in the dining room. Everyone likes to eat, everyone likes to spend time there. We need a bigger room! Other than that, oh my gosh, it’s even more enjoyable to be here.”<\/p>\n

Sabalenka is set to face a red-hot Raducanu in the third round, just over a month after their thrilling match at Wimbledon. Back in early July, Britain’s No. 1 put on one of her best performances in quite some time, pushing the Belarusian into a first-set tiebreak before eventually running out of gas and losing in straight sets.<\/p>\n

Raducanu has been on a roll this year. The 22-year-old was outstanding in her straight-sets win over Olga Danilovic.<\/p>\n

“I’m really building some momentum. I’m really happy with how I’ve stayed pretty consistent over the last few months,” said Raducanu afterwards. “I still feel like there’s a long way to go but just working hard behind the scenes, putting a lot of hours in and hoping I can trust in that.”<\/p>\n

Raducanu has named Francis Roig as her full-time coach. The Spaniard was part of Rafael Nadal’s team, alongside the tennis legend’s uncle, Toni, for each of his 22 Grand Slam victories. Raducanu is hopeful that Roig can help her make the necessary adjustments to get back to the top of the game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka has called for a bigger dining room at the Cincinnati Open, despite being…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57944,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[4909,64,63,41765,47531,21345,85,747,6414],"class_list":{"0":"post-57943","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-aryna-sabalenka","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-cincinnati-open","12":"tag-dining-room-facilities-upgrade","13":"tag-emma-raducanu","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-tennis","16":"tag-tennis-section"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57943","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=57943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}