Aug 15, 2025, 08:39 PM ET<\/p>\n
Defending champion Aryna Sabalenka<\/a> was eliminated from the Cincinnati Open after a straight-sets 6-1, 6-4 defeat to Elena Rybakina<\/a> in the quarterfinals Friday.<\/p>\n Rybakina was dominant in the opening set, dropping just one game and wrapping up an impressive win in just an hour and 14 minutes, serving 11 aces.<\/p>\n The victory continues Rybakina’s return to form after her semifinal appearance at the National Bank Open in Toronto.<\/p>\n The 2022 Wimbledon winner will meet Iga Swiatek<\/a> in the semifinals after she beat Anna Kalinskaya<\/a> 6-3, 6-4.<\/p>\n Carlos Alcaraz<\/a> fought off a spirited Andrey Rublev<\/a> to book his spot in the semifinal of the competition with a 6-3, 4-6, 7-5 win.<\/p>\n Alcaraz took the first set, but Rublev fought back in the second set, and it finally looked like Alcaraz would seal victory when he broke Rublev to go 5-3 up. But Rublev broke back.<\/p>\n Rublev needed to hold serve to take the game to a tiebreak, but a critical double fault clinched Alcaraz’s victory.<\/p>\n Alcaraz, 22, hit 11 aces in the victory and will next face third-seeded Alexander Zverev<\/a>, who knocked out fifth-seeded American Ben Shelton 6-2, 6-2.<\/p>\n Elsewhere, Veronika Kudermetova<\/a> earned a 6-1, 6-2 win over Varvara Gracheva<\/a> to set up a clash with either Coco Gauff<\/a> or Jasmine Paolini<\/a>.<\/p>\n Information from Press Association was used in this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aug 15, 2025, 08:39 PM ET Defending champion Aryna Sabalenka was eliminated from the Cincinnati Open after a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-87228","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\/87228","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=87228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}