In the singles tournament, world number four Iga Swiatek was forced to retire from her third round tie against American Ann Li because of illness.<\/p>\n
Poland’s Swiatek bounced back from losing the opening set to take the second but was trailing 3-0 in the decider when she called time on her tournament.<\/p>\n
“I heard there is something going on between players, that the virus is somewhere on site. I’m sure I’ll be fine in a couple of days but I had zero energy and zero stability and just felt really bad physically, and yesterday even worse,” Swiatek said. <\/p>\n
“On the court before the tournament I felt like I’m playing great so actually it’s sad for me that I can’t play because I was feeling really good with my game and I was moving forward in the process.<\/p>\n
“But the tournament has just started and I couldn’t even compete today so it’s disappointing.”<\/p>\n
It is the earliest six-time Grand Slam winner Swiatek has exited the Madrid Open in five appearances, having won the title in 2024.<\/p>\n
Swiatek will hope to recover quickly with the Italian Open beginning on 28 April and the French Open scheduled for 18 May.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, defending champion Aryna Sabalenka marched through to the fourth round with a 6-1 6-4 win over Jaqueline Cristian.<\/p>\n
World number one Sabalenka, of Belarus, will face either Ukraine’s Anhelina Kalinina or Japan’s Naomi Osaka next.<\/p>\n
Hailey Baptiste pulled off an upset against Italian world number nine Jasmine Paolini, winning 7-5 6-3 to set up a fourth-round tie with Belinda Bencic.<\/p>\n
In the men’s singles, defending champion Casper Ruud beat Jaume Munar 6-0 6-1 and will face Spain’s Alejandro Davidovich Fokina in the third round.<\/p>\n
World number three Alexander Zverev also advanced courtesy of a 6-1 3-6 6-3 win over Mariano Navone. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the singles tournament, world number four Iga Swiatek was forced to retire from her third round tie…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-606444","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\/606444","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=606444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}