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Sabalenka leans on power to outlast Pegula and reach Riyadh semifinals

Sabalenka leaned on raw power to rally past Pegula in Riyadh and secure a spot in the semis. indeed.

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Aryna Sabalenka advanced to the semifinals after a 6-4, 2-6, 6-3 victory over Jessica Pegula in a Riyadh round-robin match that lasted two hours and three minutes.

“She pushed me, and I love it,” Aryna Sabalenka said after beating Jessica Pegula 6-4, 2-6, 6-3 in their Riyadh round-robin match on Tuesday.

The result added another chapter to a one-sided overall rivalry: Sabalenka has won nine of their 12 meetings, seven of those in straight sets. Still, recent encounters have tightened. At the US Open, Pegula won a set for the first time in two years before Sabalenka prevailed 6-4 in the third. In Wuhan, Pegula ended a four-match skid against Sabalenka by winning a third-set tiebreak.

Both arrived in form. Pegula had beaten Coco Gauff and Sabalenka had beaten Jasmine Paolini in earlier matches in Riyadh. On Tuesday, Sabalenka captured the opening set by forcing errors and dictating enough points. Pegula answered in the second by stepping in, counter-punching and coming to the net.

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“In the second set, she just stepped in and played incredible tennis,” Sabalenka said. “In the third set I was just thinking, ‘I’m gonna go after my shots. I’m gonna try to stay even more aggressive. Put that speed back with her and hope that I’ll get my chance.’”

Pegula threatened to take control early in the final set, breaking for 2-1 and appearing to move toward a 3-1 lead. Sabalenka reversed course with a series of aggressive returns, a forehand passing shot and decisive groundstrokes that produced multiple breaks and a run to 5-2 before sealing the win with a forehand winner.

“You know what,” Sabalenka said to herself, ‘I have nothing else to do, I’m just going as hard as I can, and heavy as I can, down the lines.”

Statistically the match was noisy: Sabalenka hit only two more winners than Pegula and made 19 more unforced errors, but she forced Pegula into 36 errors to 19. With a 2-0 record in the round-robin, Sabalenka has moved into the semifinals. For all her success, she has never won the WTA Finals and has reached the title match just once; this is the first season she has been No. 1 for the majority of the year.

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Equipment Finals Grand Slam

Sabalenka debuts Wilson Blade v10 and reflects on pressure, regret and grief in Esquire profile

World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka debuts a Wilson Blade v10, discusses grief, regrets and lessons. Read on

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Fans missing Aryna Sabalenka at the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix have been met with a steady stream of new material from the world No. 1. Sabalenka unveiled her new racquet and posed for a fashion-forward Esquire cover shoot while speaking with editor-in-chief Michael Sebastian.

The Wilson advertisement for the Blade v10 carries a simple declaration: “Pressure is power,” a line that echoed Sabalenka’s 2026 run. A four-time Grand Slam champion, the 27-year-old rebounded from an Australian Open final loss to Elena Rybakina by completing the Sunshine Double, taking back-to-back titles at the BNP Paribas Open and the Miami Open. In Miami she avenged the Australian Open defeat to Rybakina in straight sets.

Asked how she might have lived her life outside tennis, she said she would be a “boxer or a model,” and in the Esquire conversation she addressed mistakes and hard lessons.

“I have a lot of regrets. I think we all do,” she told editor-in-chief Michael Sebastian. “Mistakes make us better people. It’s tough to be the person without regrets and mistakes. You better stay away from those people.”

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Sabalenka also revisited a difficult moment after the Roland Garros final, when she was hesitant to immediately praise Coco Gauff following a three-set defeat. “I have to take my time after the match before I go to the press conference when I lose the match, because when you do it straightaway, you’re still that emotional person,” said Sabalenka. The two players later smoothed things over and recorded conciliatory TikToks.

Beyond on-court swings, Sabalenka spoke about personal loss. She has carried the grief of losing her father in 2019 and urged emotional honesty. “It’s important to grieve, to cry, to go through the emotions,” she said. “Never hold it inside, because it’ll destroy you from the inside.”

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Billie Jean King Cup Finals ITF

U.S. eliminated from Billie Jean King Cup qualifying after 3-1 loss to Belgium

U.S. eliminated from Billie Jean King Cup qualifying after 3-1 loss to Belgium in Ostend. Shenzhen .

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The United States will not compete for a place at the Billie Jean King Cup Finals after a 3-1 defeat to Belgium in Ostend. Belgium’s captain Wim Fissette watched Greet Minnen secure the tie with a straight-sets victory over Iva Jovic, completing the deciding match on Sunday.

Making her event debut, 18-year-old Iva Jovic lost twice for her nation. She was beaten by Hanne Vandewinkel, 7-6 (3), 6-3 on Friday and then fell 7-5, 6-3 to Minnen when Belgium closed out the tie.

The U.S. fell into an early deficit when McCartney Kessler was forced to retire at 3-3 against Elise Mertens because of a back injury. That retirement handed Belgium a 2-0 lead before the Americans responded on Saturday, when Caty McNally and Nicole Melichar-Martinez each won to put the team on the scoreboard.

U.S. captain Lindsay Davenport reflected on the tie afterwards. “We tried really hard all week to find our groove and to figure out how we were gonna play, how we’re gonna get three points.But Belgium played so well. They had a great crowd here,” she said.

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“We just never quite got to playing our best. We got a little bit of, obviously, bad luck with McCartney. She was playing great. We felt like she had really seized momentum in that match when things started to go the other way. But we’ll keep working. It’s a process for sure.”

Italy led the other successful nations in qualifying, and September’s Billie Jean King Cup Finals will once again be staged in Shenzhen. The U.S., a record 18-time champion, will not be among the teams contesting the Finals this year.

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Finals Grand Slam

Petra Kvitova welcomes twin daughters, joining a rare group of tennis parents

Kvitova joined an exclusive club of tennis parents with twins, including Mandlikova and Shriver etc.

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Petra Kvitova and her husband Jiri Vanek announced that twin daughters Emma and Ella were born on March 30, making the two-time Wimbledon champion a mother of three. The arrival of the twins followed the couple’s earlier child, son Petr, who was born during the 2024 Wimbledon fortnight. Kvitova’s Instagram announcement drew more than 100,000 likes, and peers including Barbora Krejcikova, Garbiñe Muguruza and Sloane Stephens offered congratulations.

Kvitova’s twin birth comes amid a notable run of new parents on the professional tour. The draft of recent arrivals includes Garbiñe Muguruza, Ashleigh Barty, Angelique Kerber and Daria Saville, while Ons Jabeur and Caroline Garcia are expected to become first-time moms soon. The rarity of top players becoming parents of twins was underscored by comparisons to other well-known multiples in tennis, such as the Bryan brothers and the Pliskova twins, and to families of former pros who have had twins.

One of the most prominent households with two sets of twins belongs to Roger Federer and his wife Mirka. Their daughters Myla Rose and Charlene Riva were born in 2009, and sons Lenny and Leo followed in 2014. Federer reflected on winning at Wimbledon with his children present: “I looked up in the stands and saw my kids … then it started to sink in that I was a Wimbledon champion for real,” he said then, per *People* magazine .

“I saw the boys for the first time, and [seeing] them coming out to Centre Court and knowing how much Centre Court means to me, and seeing them like not knowing what’s going on. And then the girls were there too, and my wife was emotional. It just really hit me.”

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Other women from past generations who are mothers to twins include Hana Mandlikova, Gigi Fernandez and Pam Shriver. Mandlikova welcomed Elizabeth and Mark in 2001; Elizabeth Mandlik has competed on the WTA Tour and reached a career-high ranking of No. 97 in 2023, while Mark Mandlik had a standout college career at the University of Oklahoma. Shriver had a son and daughter in 2005, and Fernandez had twins in 2009. Carla Suárez Navarro and partner Olga García welcomed twin daughters Noa and Ona in June 2023 after Suárez Navarro recovered from Hodgkin lymphoma.

Kvitova retired officially after last year’s US Open with 31 career titles and 634 match victories. In a brief 2025 comeback following Petr’s birth she won one of nine matches, and she suggested she was “totally ready” to step away. “Mentally, I think I can’t do it any more, as well as emotionally and physically. … You still remember how you played before, how everything was smooth and I was hitting winners and suddenly it’s not there,” she said.

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