Six points on serve. All night.
Fifty-four minutes is roughly how long a lunch break lasts. It is also how long Aryna Sabalenka needed to remove Wang Xinyu from the Cincinnati draw, 6-1, 6-3, without ever letting the Chinese player find an opening.
No break points faced. Eight service games, six points dropped across all of them. On second serve she won 93.3% of the points she played, which is the kind of number that makes a 6-1, 6-3 scoreline look generous toward the loser.
“She is a tough opponent, and to win in straight sets in under an hour is a crazy result,” the Belarusian said afterward. “I really trusted myself, I played my shots without overthinking. That was the weapon tonight.”
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Fifty wins at WTA 1000 level while ranked No. 1
The win was her 50th at a WTA 1000 event while sitting at the top of the rankings. Since the format arrived in 2009, only two other women have got there. Serena Williams has 104. Iga Swiatek has 58.
Sara Bejlek is next, with a quarter-final spot on the line. The Czech got there the hard way, dropping the opening set to 16th seed Ekaterina Alexandrova before turning it into 4-6, 6-1, 6-2. Broken twice in that first set, she then won 34 of her 46 service points over the last two.
Gauff survives a wobble, Svitolina walks away
Coco Gauff got through too, with rather more effort. Ann Li had her at 5-3 down in the second before Gauff clawed it back for a 6-1, 7-6 (3) win. That is four wins from four in the all-American series between them.
Mirra Andreeva and Marta Kostyuk both came through in straights. Madison Keys spent 78 minutes on Karolina Siniakova and now meets Wang Xiyu, who advanced without swinging a racquet when Elina Svitolina pulled out with an ankle problem.
The last match of the night went to Marie Bouzkova over Iva Jovic. Two tiebreaks, 10 breaks of serve in total, and not much logic anywhere in it.
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