Aryna Sabalenka extends revealing tiebreak record to beat Emma Raducanu at Cincinnati Open

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2 days ago

Aryna Sabalenka won a 15th and then 16th straight tiebreak Monday to edge her way past Emma Raducanu in three hours and 10 minutes, securing a place in the Cincinnati Open fourth round. Her lethality in tiebreaks speaks to an ability to deliver in the tightest moments; that she so frequently has to play them — 19 in 2025 — underlines the vulnerability that has underscored her performances this year.
This latest victory, by a tight 7-6(3), 4-6, 7-6(5) margin against an inspired opponent, was in keeping with Sabalenka's year so far. She looked on the verge of several sizeable upsets, before finding a way to eke out the win. Against Raducanu, Sabalenka looked close to physical exhaustion in the afternoon Cincinnati heat that was comfortably over 86 degrees (30 degrees celsius). She roused herself for the final stages, finishing the match with an ace on a day that Arthur Rinderknech of France retired against Felix Auger-Aliassime of Canada due to the impact of the heat and humidity in Ohio.
'At the end I went for crazy shots,' Sabalenka said in her on-court interview, acknowledging that her rally tolerance had diminished as rapidly as her energy reserves. She ended up with 72 unforced errors to Raducanu's 41, and also won three points fewer than her opponent. But the strategy of going for broke ultimately paid off, with her more frequent forays to the net largely successful. She's added doubles specialist Max Mirnyi to her coaching team for Cincinnati and the U.S. Open, and the way in which she started putting volleys away in the closing stages spoke to a focus on that area of her game. The knifed backhand volley to bring up two match points in the tiebreak was particularly gutsy.
'I think that it was a little bit risky from me and it really helped to put a lot of pressure on her,' Sabalenka said of that point.
In her previous answer she had said again how good it is to have Raducanu back as a factor on the WTA Tour, and the pair shared a warm embrace at the net at the end of the match. Sabalenka said pre-match that Raducanu is 'definitely gonna be back in the top 10 very soon', and much of this encounter showed why she was so bullish.
Raducanu took advantage of Sabalenka's limited movement in the oppressive combination of heat and humidity with some brutal returning and hitting from the baseline. While she has had an encouraging summer, she has tended to struggle when up against the very best — this was a 14th loss from 18 career matches against top-10 opponents — but taking this match to the wire will mean what she called a 'fact-finding mission' beforehand will have provided plenty to chew on. Especially in the wake of her close defeat to Sabalenka at Wimbledon, in which she also lost the first set in a tiebreak, but on that occasion lost in straight sets, rather than three.
The near-25-minute game Raducanu won towards the end of the decider, in which she fended off four break points that would have left Sabalenka serving for the match, underlined how dogged a performance this was from the Brit.
She is No. 34 in the live rankings, which if she can cling onto by the end of the tournament would be enough for a U.S. Open seeding, with two would-be seeds, Zheng Qinwen and Paula Badosa, ruled out of New York with injury.
Despite losing the opener here, Raducanu, the U.S. Open champion four years ago, took the match to Sabalenka, whose second-serve percentage plunged to 47 percent in the second set as the energy drained from her.
Sabalenka's subdued body language was in stark contrast to the fizzing energy of Raducanu's new coach Francis Roig. This is the first tournament Roig, a longtime former coach of Rafael Nadal, has been in Raducanu's box, and he was vocal throughout — so much so that Raducanu was given a ticking off in the first set when Roig left his seat to walk towards her and offer instructions at a change of ends.
Early in the second set, Roig told Raducanu that 'win this set and you'll win the match.' When Raducanu did level things, he said ahead of the decider: 'You're better than her.'
After Raducanu hit an ace out wide to take the second set, it felt as though the match was hers for the taking. Sabalenka was moving slowly between points, and she was often a step slow from the baseline. And while Roig was not ultimately proved right, Raducanu's serving was much improved after what has been a trying year for her in that element of her game.
Sabalenka by contrast was clinging onto her service games in the decider, and getting nowhere on her opponent's. But she forced her first break point since the opening set with Raducanu serving down 3-4, which the Brit saved with an ace down the T. She saved another three when Sabalenka made errors, digging out the hold of serve at the end of a 13-deuce epic in which her concentration was tested by a child in the stands frequently crying as she went to serve.
Raducanu was also two points from defeat on a couple of occasions when serving down 4-5, but again was able to get enough balls into play to draw mistakes from her opponent. It took a tiebreak, where Sabalenka has been unbeatable since losing one exactly six months ago to Ekaterina Alexandrova at the Qatar Open, for the world No. 1 to finally prevail.
Sabalenka will next face Jéssica Bouzas Maneiro in the Cincinnati fourth round on Wednesday, after the Spaniard beat Taylor Townsend of the U.S. in straight sets. Bouzas Maneiro lost to Sabalenka 6-3, 7-5 in the second round of this year's Australian Open, but broke the world No.1s serve three times and generated 11 break points in all.
Sabalenka is the fourth-best player in the world at holding serve on the WTA Tour in 2025, behind Elena Rybakina, Naomi Osaka, and Iga Świątek. But of the 19 sets she has played in the 2025 season that have gone to tiebreaks, just two — one against Raducanu in Cincinnati, and one against McCartney Kessler at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif. — have gone to 6-6 with no breaks of serve. She has played seven finals, winning three and losing four, two of the defeats coming in Grand Slams.
And so on to Wednesday — Sabalenka said after beating Raducanu that without a day off, she'd be too exhausted to play again — when the tennis world may get another tiebreak, and another illustration of the duality of Sabalenka in 2025.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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