{"id":263049,"date":"2026-01-29T04:28:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T04:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/263049\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T04:28:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T04:28:07","slug":"day-12-preview-svitolina-finds-power-in-the-pause-ahead-of-ao-2026-semifinals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/263049\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 12 preview: Svitolina finds power in the pause ahead of AO 2026 semifinals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cIt doesn&#8217;t matter who is going to make it to the semis. It&#8217;s going to be a battle because whoever makes it there it&#8217;s an incredible player,\u201d Sabalenka said after downing teenager Iva Jovic 6-3 6-0, while Svitolina dismissed Gauff in straight sets.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy approach is going to be the same, it doesn&#8217;t matter whom I&#8217;m facing. I&#8217;ll be focused on myself and on my game, and I&#8217;ll be fighting for every point.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sabalenka has been flawless to date but faces a tough opponent in Svitolina, who is playing with rigor after making the difficult decision to take time off last year.<\/p>\n<p>The Ukrainian has put that respite down to her red-hot early-season form, which includes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wtatennis.com\/news\/4432376\/svitolina-starts-2026-on-right-foot-wins-asb-classic-for-title-no-19\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">title honours at a warm-up event in Auckland<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf I wouldn&#8217;t stop, if I would keep pushing last year, I think I wouldn&#8217;t start here,\u201d Svitolina said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI would be exhausted, and even not sure if I would be injury-free because when you play at the highest level, and you push yourself, and you are on the edge, this is where the injuries happen. This is where the tension is just too much, and your body gives up.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So, for me, it was important to just step back, and I&#8217;m very happy that I did that. Of course, now it&#8217;s easy to say because the results have been great, with winning Auckland and playing well here, but I still think it&#8217;s something that helped me.\u201d<br \/>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt doesn&#8217;t matter who is going to make it to the semis. It&#8217;s going to be a battle&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263050,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-263049","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\/263049","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=263049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}