Australian Open: Rybakina, Sabalenka will clash in the final
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Melbourne (Best Hindu News): Kazakhstan’s Alina Rybakina and Belarus’ Arina Sabalenka stormed into the finals of the Australian Open 2023 by winning their respective semi-finals on Thursday.
2022 Wimbledon champion Rybakina stormed into her second Grand Slam final with a 7-6(4), 6-3 win over former world number one Victoria Azarenka in one hour and 39 minutes.
Sabalenka stormed into her first career Grand Slam final with a 7-6(1), 6-2 win over Poland’s Magda Linett at Rod Laver Arena in one hour and 33 minutes.
Rybakina, playing the semi-finals of the Australian Open for the first time, had defeated last year’s finalist Daniel Collins, world number one Iga Swiatek and French Open 2019 champion Jelena Ostapenko in her impressive campaign.
Against two-time champion Azarenka in Melbourne, Rybakina made a strong start, taking a 5-3 lead in the first set. Azarenka came back well to level the scores at 6-6, but Rybakina made no mistakes in the tiebreaker to take the set.
In the second set, Rybakina started strongly with a 3–1 lead and won both the set and the match 6–3 without giving much chance to Azarenka.
Rybakina will now face Sabalenka for the title, who is coming into the final handing Linet her third straight defeat.
Linett also attacked brilliantly in the fourth game, taking a 2-1 lead in the first set. She served several strong serves, while Sabalenka’s unforced errors made it easy for Linett. Sabalenka, however, showed great composure in the game after trailing 0-40 to level the score at 2-2. Linett maintained her high level in the rest of the set but Sabalenka played strong shots to win the tiebreaker.
Like Rybakina, Sabalenka also won the second set without giving much chance to her opponent.
It is worth mentioning that before this Rybakina and Sabalenka have come face to face three times and Kazakhstan player has won all three times.
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