Aryna Sabalenka’s preparations for her US Open title defence suffered another blow as she crumbled in a surprise defeat by Sara Bejlek in the fourth round at the Cincinnati Open.<\/p>\n
The Belarusian top seed was 5-1 up in a first-set tiebreak and 4-1 in front in the second set, but Czech Bejlek rallied back on both occasions to win 7-6 (9-7) 6-4.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka’s position as world number one is now under threat, with Elena Rybakina able to replace her at the top of the rankings if she reaches the Cincinnati final.<\/p>\n
The 28-year-old is bidding to become the first woman to win three successive US Open titles since Serena Williams in 2014.<\/p>\n
However, her build up to the New York major – which begins on Sunday, 30 August – has been far from ideal with early losses in both Cincinnati and Toronto.<\/p>\n
Since winning the “Sunshine Double” at Indian Wells and Miami in March, Sabalenka has reached just one semi-final, which she lost to Jessica Pegula in Berlin.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, it is the first time that Bejlek, ranked 35th in the world, has defeated a top-10 opponent and reached a WTA 1000 quarter-final.<\/p>\n
“I totally lost my words. I just keep believing and that was the key today,” said the 20-year-old, who won the Abu Dhabi hard court title in February as a qualifier.<\/p>\n
“She played amazing tennis and I was just believing, keep fighting and I was just trying my best and that’s it.”<\/p>\n
Bejlek will face former Australian Open champion Madison Keys in the last eight.<\/p>\n
In the men’s event on Wednesday, American Tommy Paul saved a match point en route to knocking out top seed Alexander Zverev.<\/p>\n
Germany’s Zverev won the first set and trailed 3-4 in the second before the match was suspended for 90 minutes because of rain.<\/p>\n
But the French Open champion was unable to convert a match point at 6-5 in the second-set tie-break and Paul forced a decider.<\/p>\n
Zverev led 4-2 in the third set before the world number 24 won four straight games to complete a 4-6 7-6 (8-6) 6-4 victory and set up a quarter-final against Italy’s Flavio Cobolli.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aryna Sabalenka’s preparations for her US Open title defence suffered another blow as she crumbled in a surprise…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":864752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-864751","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\/864751","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=864751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/864752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=864751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=864751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=864751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}