The 2022 Wimbledon champion continued to go for broke in return games and struck a cross-court backhand winner to break for a 3-2 lead.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Serving to stay in the match at 3-5, Mertens saved one match point but could do little when Rybakina ripped yet another forehand winner on the second to clinch a place in the last eight.<\/p>\n
With the one hour and 17 minute victory, Rybakina extended her head-to-head lead over her Belgian foe to 7-1.<\/p>\n
Equally as self-effacing about her return game as her serve, Rybakina described it as \u201calso not bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a lot of opportunities to step in on the second serve, that’s what I tried to do,\u201d said Rybakina, who won 66 per cent of points on Mertens\u2019 second serve.<\/p>\n
\u201cOverall, I think the match was a good one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rybakina spends most of her time in Melbourne shuttling between the AO site and her hotel, but has carved out time to nurture a friendship with a local family that she met a decade ago whilst competing in the junior girls\u2019 event at AO 2016, aged 16.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I came here for the first time, I was actually alone,\u201d she recalled. \u201cI remember I lost and through my aunt I met this family, I stayed in their house for I think almost for a week after.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey showed me a lot of nice places [and] it stays a great memory because now when I come to Melbourne, I don’t really have time to visit any places.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are keeping in touch, kids are growing. It’s also funny to see how time flies and how they [have] changed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her quarterfinal opponent will be decided by a highly-anticipated fourth round clash between second seed Iga Swiatek and Australian qualifier Maddison Inglis.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will try to recover and just play my best,\u201d Rybakina said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2022 Wimbledon champion continued to go for broke in return games and struck a cross-court backhand winner…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-258119","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}