ROME \u2014 Top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka suffered a shock third-round loss to Sorana Cirstea at the Italian Open on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka appeared to be cruising to victory while leading by a set and 2-0 but the 26th-ranked Cirstea stormed back to triumph 2-6, 6-3, 7-5.<\/p>\n
It was a first win over a world No. 1 for the 36-year-old Romanian, who is playing her final pro season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very, very happy,\u201d a beaming Cirstea said. \u201cAryna is an amazing player. I thought I played really well today. I\u2019m working really, really hard. It\u2019s nice to have this result as payoff.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sabalenka appeared visibly bothered by lower back pain and called for a medical timeout for treatment while down 4-3 in the final set.<\/p>\n
\u201cFelt like my body was limiting me from performing on the highest level,\u201d Sabalenka said. “She stepped in and played incredible tennis. Didn\u2019t really give me much opportunities. … But I guess we never lose, we only learn, so it\u2019s okay.<\/p>\n
\u201cProbably it\u2019s my lower back, connected to the hip, which is limiting me from the full rotation. We are going to have some days off, spend it on recovery. That\u2019s the plan for now.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was the second straight surprise exit for Sabalenka, who was\u00a0upset by American Hailey Baptiste\u00a0in the Madrid Open quarterfinals last week.<\/p>\n
Cirstea will next play Linda Noskova in the round of 16.<\/p>\n
Defending champion Jasmine Paolini was also out. The Italian wasted three match points in a 4-6, 7-6 (5), 6-3 loss to Elise Mertens in the third round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ROME \u2014 Top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka suffered a shock third-round loss to Sorana Cirstea at the Italian Open on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-660069","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\/660069","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=660069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}