World number one Aryna Sabalenka eased into the quarter-finals at Indian Wells with a 6-2 6-4 victory over Naomi Osaka.<\/p>\n
The two four-time Grand Slam champions were meeting for the first time since 2018, when Osaka beat Sabalenka en route to winning the US Open.<\/p>\n
But on this occasion Sabalenka, 27, proved too strong for the 16th seed as she wrapped up the match within 80 minutes.<\/p>\n
“It’s crazy, for so many years we only played once. I’m pretty sure we are playing many more matches. She’s coming back playing great tennis,” Sabalenka said.<\/p>\n
“I’m pretty happy for the result – much better than last time.”<\/p>\n
Osaka, who did not play for 14 months around the birth of daughter Shai in July 2023, began the match with a confident opening service game.<\/p>\n
However, Sabalenka soon found her rhythm and broke the 28-year-old Japanese’s serve to take a 2-1 lead.<\/p>\n
The Belarusian tightened her grip with a barrage of powerful backhands to lead 5-2, then served out the set comfortably with an ace.<\/p>\n
Osaka and Sabalenka both held serve early in the second set before the latter seized control at 4-2 with a decisive break before she served out for the match.<\/p>\n
“I’m happy that I put so much pressure on her today, that I brought variety to the court,” Sabalenka added.<\/p>\n
“My serve worked well. On the return I played really great tennis. Happy with my performance for sure.”<\/p>\n
Sabalenka, who finished runner-up last year, will face Canada’s Victoria Mboko or Amanda Anisimova of the United States in the last eight.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, Australia’s Talia Gibson enjoyed the biggest win of her career with a 7-5 2-6 6-1 victory over Italy’s world number seven Jasmine Paolini 7-5 2-6 6-1 in her first match against a top-10 player.<\/p>\n
The 21-year-old Gibson, ranked 112 in the world and playing her first WTA 1,000 main draw, also became the first qualifier in 11 years to reach the quarter-finals of the tournament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World number one Aryna Sabalenka eased into the quarter-finals at Indian Wells with a 6-2 6-4 victory over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":516179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-516178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516178","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=516178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}