Baptiste Ends Sabalenka’s Madrid Open Title Defence

The American saved five match points at 4-5 in the decider and a sixth point in the tiebreak before handing Sabalenka her second defeat of the year and her first since the Australian Open final three months earlier.

Sabalenka is a three-time champion in Madrid and reached the final in the Spanish capital in each of the last three editions of the event, but was unable to shake off 30th-seeded Baptiste, who peppered her with big serves and ultra-aggressive groundstrokes to reach her first WTA 1000 semifinal.

Baptiste delivered big serves at several key moments – he finished the duel with a total of 12 aces and 10 double faults – and even saved a match point with a bold serve-and-volley approach en route to a memorable two-hour-30-minute victory.

Following 24-year-old Baptiste is ninth-seeded Mirra Andreeva, who gave herself an early birthday present by defeating Canadian Leylah Fernandez 7-6(7/1), 6-3 and advanced to her first semi-final in Madrid.

The Russian teenager, who turns 19 on Wednesday, was the defending champion from Linz and improved his clay court record to 11-1 this season.

Earlier in the day, Jannik Sinner suggested that Madrid Open organizers should reconsider their tournament schedule to avoid a late-night finish like the one Rafael Jodar experienced in the third round on Sunday.

In a rare start at 11am on Tuesday, Sinner advanced to the quarter-finals by beating Britain’s 19th seed Cameron Norrie 6-2, 7-5.

He announced that he had been moved to the first row at Manolo Santana Stadium so that his possible next opponent, Jodar, would be given time in the afternoon to recover from the Spaniard’s three-set victory over Joao Fonseca, which ended at 1:00 am on Monday morning.

– Unusually early start –

“It’s quite unusual for me,” Sinner told Tennis TV of the early kick-off.

“There was a question whether I or Jodar would play at 4. But it is right for him to play at 4 because he finished the match very, very late.

“But at the same time I feel that we need to make some adjustments to the day’s schedule. Two games from 20:00 are too late.

“Although it’s been a day in between. But it’s still very, very late.”

“At 1.30 in the morning you finish work, you need to eat, you need to be treated, so it’s very late. But we are trying to adapt ourselves, our bodies, our minds, so from my perspective today was a good performance.”

Competing to advance to the semi-finals for the first time in the Spanish capital, Sinner will next face 19-year-old Jodar in the highly anticipated last eight match.

Jodar’s dream run on home soil continued with convincing 7-5 and 6-0 wins over world number 66 Vit Kopriva.

Casper Ruud came back from the brink to keep his title defense alive with a 6-7 (4/7), 7-6 (7/2), 7-6 (7/3) victory over former finalist Stefanos Tsitsipas.

In three hours of high-quality competition, Tsitsipas took a 5-3 lead in the decider, held two match points and served to win at 5-4, but Ruud, who was 0/11 on break points up to that point, found a way to knock down the Greek’s serve and went on to win the tiebreaker.

Ruud will face 21-year-old Belgian Alexander Blockx in the semi-finals.

Last week’s Barcelona champion Arthur Fils defeated Argentinian 25th seed Tomas Martin Etcheverry with sets of 6-3, 6-4 at Caja Magica and reached the quarter-finals.

The French player will take part in the last four, facing Jiri Lehecka, who defeated sixth-seeded Italian Lorenzo Musetti 6-3, 6-3.