{"id":240000,"date":"2025-11-02T18:20:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T18:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/240000\/"},"modified":"2025-11-02T18:20:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T18:20:10","slug":"wta-finals-2025-aryna-sabalenka-beats-jasmine-paolini-in-riyadh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/240000\/","title":{"rendered":"WTA Finals 2025: Aryna Sabalenka beats Jasmine Paolini in Riyadh"},"content":{"rendered":"

Defending champion Coco Gauff faces fellow American Jessica Pegula in the second match in the Stefanie Graf Group on Sunday after Elena Rybakina and Iga Swiatek triumphed<\/a> on the opening day.<\/p>\n

Sabalenka has qualified for the year-end Finals for the past five years but has never won the title. She was runner-up to Caroline Garcia in 2022.<\/p>\n

The 29-year-old was imperious against Paolini, who is the only player competing in the singles and doubles tournaments.<\/p>\n

Sabalenka hit 11 aces, won 66% of first-serve points and produced 24 winners to outmuscle the agile Paolini.<\/p>\n

The pair traded breaks in the first set before Sabalenka powered on, winning six games in a row to close out the opener and take a 4-0 lead in the second.<\/p>\n

Paolini got on the board and took Sabalenka to deuce in the next game, but big first serves helped Sabalenka to hold, and Paolini barely threatened from there on.<\/p>\n

Earlier, third seeds Erin Routliffe of New Zealand and Canada’s Gabriela Dabrowski began their doubles campaign with a 6-3 7-6 (7-2) win over Russians Mirra Andreeva and Diana Shnaider.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, Canadian 19-year-old Victoria Mboko continued her breakthrough year with a 7-5 6-7 (9-11) 6-2 victory over Spain’s Cristina Bucsa to win the Hong Kong Open.<\/p>\n

It is a second title of the season for Mboko after her stunning triumph in Montreal<\/a> in August.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Defending champion Coco Gauff faces fellow American Jessica Pegula in the second match in the Stefanie Graf Group…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240001,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-240000","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}