{"id":421301,"date":"2026-01-20T11:25:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T11:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/421301\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T11:25:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T11:25:07","slug":"american-tennis-player-has-request-for-australian-open-fan-who-barked-at-her-in-upset-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/421301\/","title":{"rendered":"American tennis player has request for Australian Open fan who \u2018barked\u2019 at her in upset win"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>American tennis player Peyton Stearns had an unusual request from a fan at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/sports\/tennis\/australian-open\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Australian Open<\/a> as she went on to upset No. 27 Sofia Kenin in straight sets on Monday, 6-3, 6-2.<\/p>\n<p>Stearns wrote on social media that she wanted the fan who \u201cbarked\u201d at her to do it again when she takes on Croatia\u2019s Petra Marcinko in the second round.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/sports\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhoever barked at me during my match today, please keep it up for the next round,\u201d she wrote on X.<\/p>\n<p>The barking may have been motivation for Stearns, 24, who is only making her third Australian Open appearance. She had 15 aces and was 3-of-7 on break points against Kenin.<\/p>\n<p>Kenin had four <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/sports\/tennis\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">double faults<\/a> and couldn\u2019t seem to find a rhythm to outduel Stearns.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/sports\/venus-williams-set-become-oldest-woman-australian-open-main-draw-wild-card-entry\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">VENUS WILLIAMS SET TO BECOME OLDEST WOMAN IN AUSTRALIAN OPEN MAIN DRAW WITH WILD-CARD ENTRY<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Stearns made her Women\u2019s Tennis Association debut in 2021 at the Silicon Valley Classic as an alternate into the doubles draw. A year later, she was a wildcard entry in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/sports\/tennis\/us-open-tennis\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">U.S. Open<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Stearns has one WTA title in her career. She won five tournaments on the International Tennis Federation circuit and finished runner-up four times.<\/p>\n<p>At the Australian Open in the last two years, Stearns has only made it to the first round. She lost to Emma Navarro last year and Daria Kasatkina in 2024.<\/p>\n<p>Follow Fox News Digital\u2019s<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/FoxNewsSports_\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">\u00a0sports coverage on X<\/a> and subscribe to<a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/newsletters\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\"> the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"display: inline;\">.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"American tennis player Peyton Stearns had an unusual request from a fan at the Australian Open as she&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":421302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-421301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421301","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=421301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}