{"id":1009,"date":"2023-01-26T17:09:29","date_gmt":"2023-01-26T15:09:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eishonline.co.za\/jftl\/?p=1009"},"modified":"2023-01-26T17:09:29","modified_gmt":"2023-01-26T15:09:29","slug":"aussie-open-ladies-semi-finals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/eishonline.co.za\/jftl\/2023\/01\/26\/aussie-open-ladies-semi-finals\/","title":{"rendered":"Aussie Open – Ladies Semi-Finals"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Day 11 and we had just 4 ladies and 4 men remaining in the draw at the beginning of the day. Today we had the two ladies semi-finals and both matches were interesting match ups indeed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first ladies semi-final was between 22nd seed, Rybakina and 24th seed Azarenka. Rybakina had beaten 13th seed, Collins, number 1 in the world, Swiatek and 17th seed Ostapenko on her way to the semi-finals and her opponent Azarenka had had a similar road beating Kenin, Keys the 10th seed and 3rd seed Pegula. At the beginning of the tournament some may have thought we would be watching Swiatek vs Pegula in the semi’s but instead we got to watch the 2 players who knocked those 2 out of the tournament. Rybakina got the ladies semi-finals underway and held relatively comfortably. Azarenka had a tougher 1st game but got through it without facing a break point and both players were on the board at 1-1. The first player to break was actually Azarenka in the 5th game of the first set. The 24th seed broke Rybakina with her first break point of the match and led 3-2. Unfortunately for Azarenka, Rybakina managed to break straight back as she also took the first opportunity she had in the match. Rybakina then held and managed to then break the Azarenka serve again to lead 5-3 and she was serving for the set. Azarenka saved a set point and managed to take her 2nd break point opportunity to keep the set alive at 5-4 down. Azarenka was then 30-30 before winning the next 2 points to make it 5-5 and now all the momentum was with Azarenka. The 11th game of the opening set was huge for Rybakina who managed to come back from 0-40 down to win 5 points in a row and somehow lead the opening set 6-5. Azarenka then held to love to send the opener into a tiebreak. Rybakina led 2-0 and then 4-2 in the tiebreak. The 22nd seed eventually taking the tiebreak 7-4 and this time she had the first set. Azarenka had to serve well in the 2nd set to put pressure on Rybakina but it was Rybakina who broke to love and then held her own serve to lead 3-1 and by a set. From there on Azarenka really struggled on serve and she was broke again to go down 5-2. Azarenka delayed the inevitable by breaking Rybakina to make it 5-3 but the very next game, the Azarenka serve broke down again and Rybakina broke to win the match and she would play in Sunday’s final. Could she add to her Wimbledon title of last year?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2nd semi-final was between the 5th seed, Sabalenka who had yet to drop a set and unseeded Polish player, Linette. Sabalenka had beaten some big names up until this point; Rogers, Mertens, Bencic while Linette had beaten Kontaveit, Alexandrova, Garcia and Pliskova to get to this point of the competition. An interesting encounter on paper but who would come out on top? Sabalenka had been a grand slam semi-final before 3 times but has never made it to a final so would this be her year. She began the match serving and it was a nervy game as she was broken to love. Linette then won her service game to 15 which meant the Polish player had won 8 of the 1st 9 points. A crucial third game for Sabalenka and she managed to win it and she was on the board. A costly 4th game for Linette as she was 40-0 up before losing 5 games in a row to hand the break back to Sabalenka. The rest of the set was an impressive display of tennis as both ladies were not broken for the rest of the set. This meant we headed into a tiebreak and what a tiebreak played by Sabalenka. Her tennis was unplayable as she raced to a 6-0 lead and eventually took the tiebreak 7-1. A huge set for Sabalenka to win. Linette began the 2nd set serving and managed to hold her serve. Sabalenka did the same and just as Rybakina did in the 1st semi-final, Sabalenka took the 3rd game and led by a break. Linette went on to lose her next service game as well and quickly found herself 5-1 down in the set. She managed to save 3 match points in her service game and forced Sabalenka to serve the match out and Sabalenka did just that. An impressive 2 serves from 30-30 meant that this time Sabalenka had reached her first grand slam final. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Onto the fantasy leaderboard and ‘Sinner’s Injuries’ remain in the lead but they have a new challenger just 5 points off the lead in 2nd by the name of ‘Lynda’s Team’. ‘Down Under’ and ‘Groundstroke’ remain locked together in 3rd with ‘Live Once Serve Twice’ dropping down to 5th now. ‘Wizards’ and ‘Fine Whines’ were the only teams eliminated on day 11.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Top Half<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Bottom Half<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Results on day 11:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  • Rybakina(22) beat Azarenka(24) – 7-6(4); 6-3<\/li>
  • Sabalenka(5) beat Linette – 7-6(1); 6-2<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    Men’s Semi-Finals Tomorrow<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    • Khachanov(18) vs Tsitsipas(3) (05:30)<\/li>
    • Djokovic(4) vs Paul (10:30)<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Day 11 and we had just 4 ladies and 4 men remaining in the draw at the beginning of the day. Today we had the two ladies semi-finals and both matches were interesting match ups indeed. The first ladies semi-final was between 22nd seed, Rybakina and 24th seed Azarenka. Rybakina had beaten 13th seed, Collins, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1010,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australian-open-2023"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/eishonline.co.za\/jftl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/eishonline.co.za\/jftl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/eishonline.co.za\/jftl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eishonline.co.za\/jftl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eishonline.co.za\/jftl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1009"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/eishonline.co.za\/jftl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1013,"href":"http:\/\/eishonline.co.za\/jftl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009\/revisions\/1013"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eishonline.co.za\/jftl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/eishonline.co.za\/jftl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eishonline.co.za\/jftl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eishonline.co.za\/jftl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}