{"id":420922,"date":"2026-01-21T14:17:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T14:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/420922\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T14:17:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T14:17:13","slug":"australian-open-2026-coco-gauff-and-aryna-sabalenka-breeze-through-to-third-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/420922\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian Open 2026: Coco Gauff and Aryna Sabalenka breeze through to third round"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sabalenka, who has yet to lose a match in 2026, will face Anastasia Potapova in the third round at Melbourne Park, after the Russian-born Austrian <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/tennis\/articles\/c620l640jz2o\" class=\"ssrcss-ckhpdl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">defeated British number one Emma Raducanu.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Like Gauff, top seed Sabalenka was quick to assert herself against an opponent ranked 701 places below her, winning five consecutive games in the first 15 minutes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But the four-time Grand Slam champion was initially frustrated as she sought to polish off the opener, having her serve broken before being denied on her first six set points.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">With Bai&#8217;s resistance ended, Sabalenka cruised to victory. She has now won 45 of her last 50 sets at the Australian Open &#8211; a record bettered only by Steffi Graf, Martina Hingis, Monica Seles, and Serena Williams in the Open era.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;That sounds crazy and surreal, to be honest,&#8221; Sabalenka, who won the Melbourne title in 2023 and 2024, said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I just never thought that people will compare me to these names, even though I&#8217;m really far away from their achievements. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It motivates me to keep doing my thing. It just means for me that I&#8217;m on the right way.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sabalenka, who has yet to lose a match in 2026, will face Anastasia Potapova in the third round&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-420922","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420922","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=420922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}