Aryna Sabalenka and Elena Rybakina, the two top women’s players in the world, will battle it out in a \u200bMiami Open semi-final on Thursday after coming through their quarter-final matches.<\/p>\n
World \u200cnumber one Sabalenka took down American Hailey Baptiste 6-4 6-4 on Wednesday and is looking to complete the coveted ‘Sunshine Double’ after her triumph in the Indian Wells final over \u200bfellow big-hitter Rybakina.<\/p>\n
“It’s definitely going to be a battle,” Sabalenka said \u200bin an on-court interview. “It’s always a battle, always a fight, always \u2060a challenge.”
\n“We push each other to the limit and we always bring \u200bthe best tennis… These are the matches where I get better as a \u200bplayer.”<\/p>\n
With the win, the defending champion from Belarus improved to 21-1 for the year. She also holds a 9-7 edge over Rybakina in their career meetings.<\/p>\n
Earlier in the day, \u200bRybakina rallied from a set down to beat Jessica Pegula 2-6 6-3 6-4 \u200bin their quarter-final to reach the Miami Open last four for the third time. It \u200cwas \u2060her fifth consecutive win over the American, following victories this season at the Australian Open and Indian Wells.<\/p>\n
“It’s always very difficult matches with Jessica,” Rybakina said in her on-court interview. “She started playing well, and I was a bit rushing \u200band frustrated, but \u200bI’m happy that \u2060I managed to bounce back and turn it around in the second set.<\/p>\n
“Couple times I got lucky. I was trying \u200bto come a little bit more to the net. \u200bJessica plays \u2060very fast and sometimes short, so it was not easy to just stay back I had to adapt a little bit.”<\/p>\n
Thursday’s other semi-final will see American Coco \u2060Gauff \u200btake on Karolina Muchova of the Czech Republic \u200bfor a place in the final of the WTA 1000 event.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":21159,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-30012","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"World \u200cnumber one Sabalenka took down American Hailey Baptiste 6-4 6-4 on Wednesday.","published_date":"","news_description":"World \u200cnumber one Sabalenka took down American Hailey Baptiste 6-4 6-4 on Wednesday.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/30012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/30012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30013,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/30012\/revisions\/30013"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=30012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}