MELBOURNE \u2013 Belarusian world number one Aryna Sabalenka crushed Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina in a politically charged Australian Open semi-final on Thursday and faces Elena Rybakina for a third Melbourne title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was no handshake after Sabalenka dismantled Svitolina 6-2, 6-3, before Kazakhstan’s Rybakina was also a straight-sets winner, over Jessica Pegula of the United States<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ruthless Sabalenka will take some stopping as she pursues a third Melbourne crown in four years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She is on an 11-match win streak this year, having come into the first major of 2026 on the back of claiming the title in Brisbane<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The hard-hitting 27-year-old is into her fourth Australian Open final in a row and yet to drop a set all year<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sabalenka and Moscow-born fifth seed Rybakina have met 14 times, with the Belarusian winning eight of them<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That includes the Melbourne final in 2023, when Sabalenka fought back to win in three sets.aver Arena that there would be no handshake afterwards, asking fans to “respect” that<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like other players from Ukraine, Svitolina does not shake hands with opponents from Russia or Moscow’s ally Belarus because of the war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MELBOURNE \u2013 Belarusian world number one Aryna Sabalenka crushed Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina in a politically charged Australian Open semi-final on Thursday and faces Elena Rybakina for a third Melbourne title. There was no handshake after Sabalenka dismantled Svitolina 6-2, 6-3, before Kazakhstan’s Rybakina was also a straight-sets winner, over Jessica Pegula of the United States […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailysadaepakistan.com\/English\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailysadaepakistan.com\/English\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailysadaepakistan.com\/English\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailysadaepakistan.com\/English\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailysadaepakistan.com\/English\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1278"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailysadaepakistan.com\/English\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1280,"href":"https:\/\/dailysadaepakistan.com\/English\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1278\/revisions\/1280"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailysadaepakistan.com\/English\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailysadaepakistan.com\/English\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailysadaepakistan.com\/English\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailysadaepakistan.com\/English\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}