June 20 (Reuters) \u2013 World number one Aryna Sabalenka\u2019s Wimbledon preparations suffered a setback after she was beaten by American Jessica Pegula 6-4 6-7(4) 6-0 in the Berlin \u200bOpen semi-finals.<\/p>\n
Pegula will face Linda Noskova in the \u200cfinal after the Czech eighth seed ended the run of Filipino Alexandra Eala with a 6-2 6-4 victory.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka, who exited the French Open in the quarter-finals, struggled to find her rhythm after a slow start, \u200cand \u200bPegula took the opening set following an \u2060early break.<\/p>\n
After a rain \u2060delay, Sabalenka took the second-set tiebreak before Pegula reasserted control to race through the decider.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told myself after I ended up losing that second-set tiebreak that before the rain \u200bdelay, I had a lot of momentum. She just hit a double fault. I felt like I kind of \u2060had it there and I was \u2060serving well,\u201d said 2024 Berlin champion Pegula.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was \u200bin a good rhythm, and then having to get off \u200bcourt and losing that pretty quickly \u2014 only winning one \u200cpoint in the tiebreak was a little tough.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut she\u2019s No. 1 in the world for a reason and I feel like I gave her too many easy shots and she went \u2060for it and that\u2019s just what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
All four of the Belarusian\u2019s Grand Slam titles \u2014 her most recent at the 2025 U.S. Open \u2014 \u2060have come on \u200chard courts, and she is still chasing \u2060a first Wimbledon crown after three semi-final \u200bruns.<\/p>\n
She lost \u200cthis year\u2019s Australian Open final to Elena \u200bRybakina, a \u2060year after finishing runner-up to American Madison Keys.<\/p>\n
Noskova made a dominant start, securing an early break to swiftly win the first set. Eala ran out of ideas in the second as Noskova secured the win.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Paras J. Haji in Bengaluru, editing \u200bby Pritha Sarkar)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"June 20 (Reuters) \u2013 World number one Aryna Sabalenka\u2019s Wimbledon preparations suffered a setback after she was beaten…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":750819,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-750818","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\/750818","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=750818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/750819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=750818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=750818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=750818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}