{"id":579415,"date":"2026-05-12T06:58:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T06:58:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/579415\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T06:58:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T06:58:20","slug":"italian-open-aryna-sabalenka-loses-to-sorana-cirstea-in-third-round-jasmine-paolini-out-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/579415\/","title":{"rendered":"Italian Open: Aryna Sabalenka loses to Sorana Cirstea in third round, Jasmine Paolini out"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sabalenka was twice a set and a break up on veteran Cirstea, who is retiring at the end of the season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">She also broke the 36-year-old when Cirstea served for the match at 5-4 in the third set &#8211; only to immediately hand the advantage back in the next game.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sabalenka&#8217;s serve &#8211; the most improved part of her game and the key to her rise to the top of the rankings &#8211; was broken six times throughout the match.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">She made 72% of her first serves but won just 56% of points behind it and could only take 11 of 26 points behind her second serve.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sabalenka was left slapping at a ball in irritation after losing five games in a row to concede the second set and go an immediate break down in the decider.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">She responded in the next game, but her service games always felt shaky, and a wide forehand handed Cirstea the break lead at 3-2.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sabalenka called for the trainer and had her back stretched out at 4-3 down. She then looked to be mounting a comeback after stopping Cirstea serving out the match at the first time of asking.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However, Cirstea returned brilliantly to restore her lead and converted her first match point thanks to a long Sabalenka return.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Earlier, defending champion and home favourite Jasmine Paolini was beaten 4-6 7-6 (7-3) 6-3 by Belgium&#8217;s Elise Mertens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sabalenka was twice a set and a break up on veteran Cirstea, who is retiring at the end&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":575177,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-579415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579415","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=579415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/575177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}