{"id":548677,"date":"2026-03-27T15:31:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T15:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/548677\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T15:31:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T15:31:07","slug":"aryna-sabalenka-bests-elena-rybakina-to-make-miami-open-final-faces-coco-gauff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/548677\/","title":{"rendered":"Aryna Sabalenka bests Elena Rybakina to make Miami Open final, faces Coco Gauff"},"content":{"rendered":"

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. \u2014 At this point, doing anything other than penciling Aryna Sabalenka into the final of a tennis tournament is silly.<\/p>\n

Sabalenka rolled into her fourth consecutive final of the 2026 season Thursday night, by smothering world No. 2 Elena Rybakina 6-4, 6-3 in a crisp 79 minutes at the Miami Open. The win sets up a showdown between Sabalenka and Coco Gauff, her polar opposite in playing style and a player who has taken her down twice on even bigger stages than the one they will play Saturday at Miami Gardens.<\/p>\n

Gauff\u2019s win over Sabalenka in the 2025 French Open final was a hinge moment for both players. Sabalenka, who tore into the quality of Gauff\u2019s play in her news conference that day, has since learned how to keep her emotions under control and accept that great players such as Gauff will never willingly succumb to her simply because she sits at the top of the rankings.<\/p>\n

Sabalenka hasn\u2019t won every final since then. But she won the U.S. Open, and has played deep into nearly every tournament. She is 21-1 this season.<\/p>\n

Gauff largely lost her way shortly after that win. She has won just one tournament since. In August, she hired the specialist who helped remake Sabalenka\u2019s forehand and serve to fix her own. Only this week have those strokes begun to show consistently what they might become.<\/p>\n

Those deficiencies haven\u2019t mattered so much in her biggest showdowns with Sabalenka, though, at last year\u2019s Roland-Garros final and the U.S. Open final in 2023. On both occasions, Sabalenka\u2019s power game fell apart under the duress of Gauff\u2019s relentless defense, her ability to extend points and make Sabalenka aim for the smallest of targets to prevent Gauff from giving chase with her unmatched speed and getting her racket on the ball.<\/p>\n

Defending champ is BACK \ud83c\udf1f@SabalenkaA<\/a> def. Rybakina to advance to the final! <\/p>\n

Keep an eye out for more @PIF_en<\/a> Match Point Moments tomorrow!#MiamiOpen<\/a> | #PIF<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/JEg1oxOm3l<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Miami Open (@MiamiOpen) March 27, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

What\u2019s going to happen Saturday in the final of what is a hometown tournament for both of them?<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of rallies, a lot of emotions,\u201d Sabalenka said.<\/p>\n

Gauff grew up in Delray Beach, about 45 minutes north of Hard Rock Stadium, and still makes her home near there.<\/p>\n

Sabalenka, who grew up in Belarus, has called Miami home for several years. She has become a crowd favorite at this tournament, especially among the Brazilian community since she is engaged to Georgios Frangulis, a Brazilian entrepreneur. The Brazilians were out in force Thursday night, including the former Brazilian soccer star Ronaldo.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve played so many matches, and it\u2019s physical when I play her every time, it\u2019s going to be tough,\u201d Gauff said of Sabalenka after her 6-1, 6-1 semifinal win over Karol\u00edna Muchov\u00e1. \u201cShe\u2019s playing great tennis. She\u2019s definitely world No. 1 for a reason, and it\u2019s going to be a great challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given what happened 11 days ago, when Sabalenka saved match point and prevailed over Rybakina in the championship-deciding tiebreak in Indian Wells, this one figured to be another power tennis match decided by the narrowest of margins. It was for the first eight games, and then it wasn\u2019t at all.<\/p>\n

As good as she was, Sabalenka still lost 48 of 114 points Thursday night in Hard Rock Stadium. But Sabalenka was about as good as any player could hope to be against a player who has kept her from two big titles in the last five months.<\/p>\n

Rybakina beat Sabalenka in the WTA Tour Finals with the biggest payday in women\u2019s tennis history, $5.235 million, on the line, and then again in the Australian Open final. A point away from the BNP Paribas Open title in Indian Wells, Calif., Rybakina looked as if she had Sabalenka\u2019s number. Sabalenka had other ideas. She ripped a backhand to save match point a week ago Sunday and hasn\u2019t stopped ripping shots since.<\/p>\n

She jumped on every chance Rybakina gave her, trying to strike before Rybakina could. She stood as close as she could to the baseline and bounded across it whenever she saw a ball floating short that she could cream. Rybakina never found her rhythm. Her usually reliable first serve, one of the biggest weapons in the game, missed 36 percent of the time, giving Sabalenka too many chances.<\/p>\n

Now Sabalenka will hope for more of the same against Gauff, who retired from her second match in Indian Wells with a nerve issue that was causing shooting pains down her left arm. She would have skipped the Miami Open had it been any other tournament, she said. Her team told her to sit this one out.<\/p>\n

She woke up a few days before it and decided she wanted to give it a shot. She\u2019d never done well on the fast courts here, so if she lost quickly, it wouldn\u2019t be a big deal. Now she\u2019s a match away from going all the way, her forehand is firing, and her serve isn\u2019t leaking double faults. She\u2019s playing like Coco Gauff again.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like the improvements are happening, especially with my forehand,\u201d she said. \u201cI said earlier this year that I felt like I was practicing well and just waiting for it to click. And I think it\u2019s not obviously fully clicked, but I think it is clicking.\u201d<\/p>\n