Aryna \u200cSabalenka beats Karolina Muchova to reach Brisbane Open final where she will defend title against Marta Kostyuk.<\/p>\n
Published On 10 Jan 202610 Jan 2026<\/p>\n
Click here to share on social media<\/p>\n
share2<\/p>\n
Defending champion Aryna \u200cSabalenka outclassed Karolina Muchova to seal a 6-3 6-4 win at the Brisbane International and reach the \u200dfinal of the Australian Open tune-up tournament for the third straight year.<\/p>\n
In Sunday\u2019s title clash, the Belarusian will face Ukrainian Marta Kostyuk, who cruised past world number six Jessica Pegula 6-0 6-3 for her third straight top-10 win after also defeating Amanda Anisimova and \u2060Mirra Andreeva in her last two rounds.<\/p>\n
Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list<\/p>\n
World number one Sabalenka has been in similarly superb form in her \u200bfirst tournament of the season, and arrived for her match against Muchova on Saturday having defeated \u200dreigning Melbourne Park champion Madison Keys in straight sets in the quarterfinals.<\/p>\n
Things were expected to be trickier against Muchova, who is known for her inventive brand of tennis and had racked up a 3-1 career head-to-head record over Sabalenka, \u200dincluding victories in \u2060their previous three meetings.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka shrugged off that statistic to take full control of the semifinal clash with a break in the second game, before she displayed deft touches and power from the baseline to take the first set, which she finished with a huge backhand winner.<\/p>\n
The four-time Grand Slam champion, who is eyeing her third Australian Open trophy when the tournament begins on January 18 at Melbourne Park, was pushed harder in the next set but edged ahead \u200bagain at 5-4 to wrap up the win on serve.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were a \u200clot of close misses at the end of the second set but I\u2019m super happy to close this match in straight sets,\u201d said Sabalenka, who prevailed on her fourth match point.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s a great opponent and I knew that if I gave \u200cher that opportunity in the last games, she would take it, and it would be a bit trickier to play. I\u2019m super happy I got \u200cthe win.\u201d<\/p>\n
Three Americans were in action in the Brisbane men\u2019s event \u2060semifinals, where Brandon Nakashima beat Aleksandar Kovacevic 7-6(4) 6-4 before their compatriot Alex Michelsen went down 6-4 6-2 to top seed Daniil Medvedev of Russia.<\/p>\n
In the Auckland Classic, Filipina Alexandra Eala squandered a match point to allow China\u2019s Wang Xinyu to secure \u200ca 5-7 7-5 6-4 win. Up next for Wang is Elina Svitolina, who beat Iva Jovic 7-6(5) 6-2 in the second semifinal.<\/p>\n
Top seed Lorenzo Musetti reached the final of the Hong Kong Open, beating Andrey \u200dRublev 6-7(3) 7-5 6-4 in a last-four clash. Alexander Bublik beat Marcos Giron 3-6 6-4 6-2 in the second semifinal, setting up a title clash with Musetti.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aryna \u200cSabalenka beats Karolina Muchova to reach Brisbane Open final where she will defend title against Marta Kostyuk.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[1204,1246,3,1079,99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-400697","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-asia-pacific","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-sport","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}