World number one Aryna Sabalenka needed just 54 minutes to reach the Cincinnati Open fourth round – but Daniil Medvedev could not hide his frustration after missing three match points in a surprise defeat.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka did not face a break point in a 6-1 6-3 win over China’s Wang Xinyu.<\/p>\n
The Belarusian lost only six points in eight service games and committed just five unforced errors to 17 winners in a composed performance.<\/p>\n
It was Sabalenka’s easiest win for some time following her fourth-round Wimbledon exit<\/a> and an early loss in Canada<\/a> last week.<\/p>\n “To get this win in under an hour [is] an insane result and I’m so happy to be through,” the 28-year-old said.<\/p>\n “I think I really trusted myself and I was going for my shots without overthinking.<\/p>\n “That was the weapon of tonight’s match.”<\/p>\n Sabalenka is the two-time defending champion at the US Open, which begins on Sunday, 30 August.<\/p>\n No woman since Serena Williams in 2014 has won the New York title three times in a row.<\/p>\n Sabalenka’s position as world number one is also under threat from Australian Open champion Elena Rybakina.<\/p>\n Four-time major singles champion Sabalenka had a 354-point gap over Rybakina going into Cincinnati.<\/p>\n Rybakina must reach the final to have a chance at surpassing Sabalenka. If Sabalenka reaches the quarter-finals, Rybakina would need to win the title to become world number one.<\/p>\n Sabalenka will face Czech Sara Bejlek for a place in the last eight.<\/p>\n Earlier, fourth seed Medvedev lost his cool after squandering a match-winning position against Brandon Nakashima.<\/p>\n The Russian had fought back from 5-2 down in the first set to take it on a tie-break and had three match points on the American’s serve at 5-4 in the second.<\/p>\n However, Nakashima saved them and won a subsequent tie-break – then ran away with the third set to win 6-7 (3-7) 7-6 (7-4) 6-1.<\/p>\n Medvedev hurled his racquet at the electronic boards at the back of the court – briefly breaking it – after missing the match points.<\/p>\n He also kicked the screen and knocked over several microphones after committing 51 unforced errors in a poor display.<\/p>\n “Down match points, I was just trying to tell myself to keep fighting for every point,” Nakashima said.<\/p>\n “I’m super happy with the level in the third.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World number one Aryna Sabalenka needed just 54 minutes to reach the Cincinnati Open fourth round – but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":742693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-742692","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\/742692","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=742692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/742693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=742692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=742692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=742692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}