A resurgent Naomi Osaka stunned world number one Aryna Sabalenka in a brilliant performance to reach the Wimbledon quarter-finals for the first time.<\/p>\n
Japan’s Osaka out-served, out-hit and out-thought her fellow four-time Grand Slam champion to win 6-2 7-6 (7-2) on Centre Court.<\/p>\n
This is Sabalenka’s earliest exit at a Grand Slam since the 2022 French Open, and the first time she has exited one in straight sets for 122 matches.<\/p>\n
But she fell to an inspired performance by Osaka, who held her racquet to her head in disbelief after clinching victory on her second match point.<\/p>\n
It is a first Wimbledon last-eight appearance for Osaka, who also reached the second week of the French Open for the first time last month.<\/p>\n
“It’s been a long time since I had so much fun on the court,” said Osaka.<\/p>\n
“To do it here means a lot.”<\/p>\n
This was the fourth time in three months that the two big-hitters had met, with Sabalenka winning the previous three encounters.<\/p>\n
This time Osaka was dominant throughout, matching Sabalenka pace-for-pace and moving well around the court.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka made a hasty exit afterwards as her search for a first Grand Slam of the year continues.<\/p>\n
Osaka will go on to face Czech 10th seed Karolina Muchova for a place in the semi-finals.<\/p>\n
Muchova’s victory over 2024 champion Barbora Krejcikova means there will be a different women’s singles champion for the 10th tournament in a row.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A resurgent Naomi Osaka stunned world number one Aryna Sabalenka in a brilliant performance to reach the Wimbledon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":534610,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-534609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}