BEIJING \u2014 Second-ranked Aryna Sabalenka was bundled out in the third round of the China Open in straight sets by the Czech Republic’s Nikola Bartunkova on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The No. 34-ranked Bartunkova defeated the four-time Grand Slam champion 6-4, 6-3 in just over an hour and a half, leaving the tournament without its two top seeds in the first week.<\/p>\n
Newly-crowned world No. 1 Elena Rybakina was ousted from the tournament on Saturday and will now be joined by Sabalenka in exiting the WTA-1000 event in Beijing early.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka, who was denied a three-peat at the U.S. Open last month by Rybakina, squandered five break points in the first set as her historic struggles in Beijing continued. The 28-year-old Belarusian has never progressed past the quarterfinals at the event.<\/p>\n
Bartunkova will next play 24-year-old Sinja Kraus of Austria, who earlier defeated Dayana Yastremska 6-1, 6-4.<\/p>\n
Fifth-ranked Mirra Andreeva eased into the fourth round with a 6-4, 6-1 victory over Polina Kudermetova. This year’s French Open winner fired six aces and took five of her seven break point opportunities to overwhelm her Uzbek opponent in just 68 minutes.<\/p>\n
In the men\u2019s tournament, top seed and U.S. Open champion Alexander Zverev plays a quarterfinal match against Novak Djokovic later Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BEIJING \u2014 Second-ranked Aryna Sabalenka was bundled out in the third round of the China Open in straight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":920120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-920119","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\/920119","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=920119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/920119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/920120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=920119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=920119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=920119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}