WUHAN, China \u2014 Iga Swiatek was knocked out of the Wuhan Open on Friday in a straight-set defeat to Jasmine Paolini \u2014 a player the\u00a0Wimbledon champion\u00a0had never previously lost against.<\/p>\n
Paolini powered her way to a 6-1, 6-2 victory over the second-ranked Swiatek in a quarterfinal that was over in 65 minutes.<\/p>\n
It was the Italian\u2019s first victory over Swiatek in their seventh meeting \u2014 with Paolini having previously won only one set \u2014 and secured her a semifinal spot against the third-ranked Coco Gauff.<\/p>\n
\u201cFinally I won a match,\u201d the seventh-seeded Paolini said. \u201cI\u2019m super happy about my level. Just feels amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paolini has a much better record against Gauff, having triumphed over the American in their past three meetings.<\/p>\n
Gauff cruised into a\u00a0second straight semifinal\u00a0with a 6-3, 6-0 victory over Laura Siegemund. She lost to\u00a0eventual champion Amanda Anisimova\u00a0in the final four at the China Open last week.<\/p>\n
The top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka will face Jessica Pegula in the other semifinal.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka extended her winning streak at Wuhan to 20 matches with a 6-3, 6-3 victory over eighth-seeded Elena Rybakina.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0U.S. Open champion\u00a0won the WTA 1000-level tournament in 2018, \u201919 and again last year on her return to the Chinese city.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka broke Rybakina’s serve three times in the 1-hour, 25-minute match to advance into the semifinals for the 11th time this season, and then waved and blew kisses to the crowd.<\/p>\n
Earlier Friday, Pegula went to a third set for a seventh consecutive match. The sixth seed dropped the first set against Katerina Siniakova before reeling through the next two for a 2-6, 6-0, 6-3 victory.<\/p>\n
Pegula is coming off wins over No. 9 Ekaterina Alexandrova and fellow American Hailey Baptiste, when she needed\u00a0seven match points\u00a0to clinch the win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WUHAN, China \u2014 Iga Swiatek was knocked out of the Wuhan Open on Friday in a straight-set defeat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203799,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-203798","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}