Relieved world No.1 Aryna Sabalenka has survived a second-set wobble against Canadian teenager Victoria Mboko to keep her plans of regaining her Australian Open crown on track.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka was unable to serve out the match on her first opportunity before closing out the contest 6-1 7-6 (7-1) to surge into her 13th consecutive grand slam quarter-final.<\/p>\n
Fans barely had time to take their seats for the day session at Rod Laver Arena before Sabalenka steamed through the opening set of their fourth-round clash in 31 minutes.<\/p>\n
Mboko won her first service game but the rest of the set was one-way traffic with the two-time AO champion appearing to turn the outing into a Sunday stroll.<\/p>\n
Building a reputation as a three-set specialist, Mboko worked her way into the match in the second set and from 4-1 down levelled at 5-5 with Sabalenka blowing three match points.<\/p>\n
But the big-serving Belarusian regained her focus in the tiebreaker and roared to victory in 86 minutes.<\/p>\n
“What an incredible player for such a young age,” Sabalenka said.<\/p>\n
“These kids coming up on tour … an incredible player who pushed me really hard today.<\/p>\n
“I’m super happy with the win and, once again, in straight sets.<\/p>\n
“She played incredible tennis. She pushed me so much, and happy to be through.”<\/p>\n
While Mboko has had a meteoric rise to world No.16 after starting 2025 outside the top 300, but this was new territory with the talented young gun playing her first grand slam fourth-round match and her first time in in the senior Australian Open draw.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka, who has two US Open titles in her haul of four majors, fired 31 winners to her opponent’s 19, while also forcing the 19-year-old into 24 errors.<\/p>\n
The superstar top seed was also guilty of 24 unforced errors with the bulk coming in the second set, but Mboko was unable to take full advantage.<\/p>\n
The 27-year-old is looking to make amends for her three-set loss in last year’s final against Madison Keys, which halted her run of Australian Open crowns at two.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka has set up a quarter-final clash with the winner of the match between American teenager Iva Jovic and Kazakhstani Yulia Putintseva.<\/p>\n
In a later match at Rod Laver Arena today, the top-seeded man Carlos Alcaraz of Spain faced American No. 19 Tommy Paul for a spot in the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n
Alexander Zverev and Coco Gauff, the third seeds on the men and women’s side, also played later for spots in the quarterfinals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Relieved world No.1 Aryna Sabalenka has survived a second-set wobble against Canadian teenager Victoria Mboko to keep her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251905,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-251904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-australia","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}