Mar 12, 2026, 07:07 PM ET<\/p>\n
INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — Aryna Sabalenka<\/a> held off Victoria Mboko<\/a> 7-6 (0), 6-4 in the quarterfinals of the BNP Paribas Open on Thursday, keeping the top-ranked player in women’s tennis in the running for her first title at Indian Wells.<\/p>\n After winning every point in the first-set tiebreaker, Sabalenka got the one break she needed to win the second set and move on to the semifinals against 14th seed Linda Noskova<\/a> of Czechia, a 6-2, 4-6, 6-2 winner over unseeded Australian Talia Gibson<\/a>.<\/p>\n Also moving on to the semifinals for just the second time at Indian Wells was ninth-seeded Ukrainian Elina Svitolina<\/a>, who knocked off second-seeded Iga Swiatek<\/a> of Poland, 6-2, 4-6, 6-4.<\/p>\n Svitolina broke to go up 5-4 in the third set and held serve for the match. She was slated to play Friday against the winner of Thursday night’s quarterfinal match between American Jessica Pegula<\/a> and Elena Rybakina<\/a> of Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n In the men’s draw, second-seeded Jannik Sinner<\/a> of Italy defeated 25th-seeded American Learner Tien<\/a> 6-1, 6-2, ending the run of the youngest American — at age 20 — to play in a quarterfinal at Indian Wells since his coach, Michael Chang, won the tournament in 1992.<\/p>\n Sinner, who served 10 aces and double-faulted only once, will play his semifinal match on Saturday against German Alexander Zverev<\/a>, a 6-2, 6-3 winner over France’s Arthur Fils<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sabalenka hasn’t lost a set in the tournament but was pushed by the 10th-seeded Mboko, a 19-year-old Canadian who won the 2025 Canadian Open.<\/p>\n Mboko was “serving much better than she did in that match in Australia – definitely a bit more confident and was playing more brave,” Sabalenka said. “I think that’s why the scoreboard was bit closer than in Australia.”<\/p>\n Sabalenka put 94% of her first serves in play and was not broken, but did fight off five break points.<\/p>\n “That was a tough battle today,” Sabalenka said. “Happy with the level I played in those key moments in each set.<\/p>\n “I was focused on my game plan. I was just playing point by point. I’m pretty happy with the way I’m serving so far.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mar 12, 2026, 07:07 PM ET INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — Aryna Sabalenka held off Victoria Mboko 7-6 (0),…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":520237,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-520236","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\/520236","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=520236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}