Sabalenka survives scare, makes Halle semis
ARYNA Sabalenka flaunts her might in booking a scary 7-6 (8/6), 3-6, 7-6 (8/6) win over Elena Rybakina in the quarterfinals of the Halle Open at the OWL Arena in Halle, Germany.
Photograph courtesy of LILAS TANTUSSI DEVOS/agence france-presse
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HALLE, Germany (AFP) — World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka saved four match points against former Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina to book her ticket to the semifinals on grass in Berlin on Friday.
Trailing the 2022 Wimbledon champion 6-2 in the final-set tie-break, Sabalenka won six straight points in a 7-6 (8/6), 3-6, 7-6 (8/6) comeback to reach her eighth semi-final of the season after two hours and 42 minutes.
She next meets 2023 Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova, who defeated Tunisian Ons Jabeur 6-4, 6-1 earlier Friday.
“Elena, she’s a great player, and we’ve had a lot of tough battles. I have no idea how I was able to win those last points. I think I just got lucky, to be honest,” said Sabalenka, who now leads 7-4 in meetings with the Kazakh.
“I remember a long time ago when I was just starting, I won a lot of matches being down match points, and not so long ago, I was thinking that it’s been a while since I’ve made a crazy comeback, and here I am.”
“It’s amazing to win matches like that and I’m proud of myself for how I stayed in. I was fighting, I was trying until the very last point.”
After winning the first set in a tiebreak, the three-time Grand Slam champion lost the momentum and the second set to Rybakina.
Sabalenka led 5-4 with serve in the final set, but let the Kazakh, world No. 11, come back, and everything came down to the tie-break.
Sabalenka saved her first match point with the help of the net, and closed out the match five points later on her serve (8-6).
On Saturday, she will face another Wimbledon winner, the returning Vondrousova, who has fallen to 164th place in the world after missing several months with a left shoulder injury.
It will be Vondrousova’s first last-four appearance since Stuttgart in April 2024.
Vondrusova breezed past Jabeur in a repeat of their 2023 Wimbledon final, which the Czech won.
Both players have been beset by injuries and have plummeted in the rankings since being in the top 10 last year.
In the other half of the draw China’s Wang Xinyu — conqueror of French Open champion Coco Gauff on Thursday — reached the semi-finals after Spanish opponent Paula Badosa retired having lost 6-1 in the first set.
Wang will play Liudmila Samsono in the semifinals after the Russian, ranked 20 in the world, continued her excellent form on the grass.
Having already beaten defending champion Jessica Pegula and Naomi Osaka this week, she dispatched last weekend’s Queen’s finalist Amanda Anisimova of the United States 6-1, 6-1 in just 57 minutes.
In the men’s side, home favorite Alexander Zverev shrugged off a mystery illness to battle past Italian Fabio Cobolli and progress to the Last Four of the Wimbledon warm-up.
The German second seed felled Cobolli 6-4, 7-6 (8/6) and will next face Daniil Medvedev, after the Russian third seed beat American Alex Michelsen 6-4, 6-3 in his quarterfinal.
In a rematch of a third-round meeting at Roland Garros three weeks ago, Zverev again produced an impressive serving performance.
He crucially rallied from 0-40 down in the second and fourth games of the first set.
A finalist in Stuttgart last week Zverev will be hoping to go one better on the grass of Halle after being a losing finalist at the tournament in 2016 and 2017.
