Ons Jabeur to last sixteen at Wimbledon, Rybakina much too strong for Boulter | Sport

,,I didn’t start very well”, said Jabeur afterwards. “I was a bit inconsistent in the first two sets. Fortunately, I was a bit more aggressive after that. It turned out well. I can’t be too critical of myself either. My opponent has already won a grand slam. You don’t just beat her.”

Last season, Jabeur reached the finals at Wimbledon and the US Open. She lost both times. At Roland Garros she reached the quarterfinals earlier this year.

Andreescu won the US Open in 2019, but has not achieved the greatest performances at a grand slam since then. At Wimbledon she was in the third round for the first time.

Elena Rybakina has reached the next round of Wimbledon without much effort. The defending champion from Kazakhstan left Katie Boulter without a chance. She defeated the British to the dismay of the London crowd in straight sets: 6-1 6-1. It took her less than an hour to do that.

Rybakina had been preparing for a somewhat ‘hostile’ audience. “But I have to say that it wasn’t too bad,” she said immediately afterwards. ,,It is logical that people are here for their own player. Still, I didn’t feel like they were against me. Maybe it was also because it went well for me from the beginning. We had to wait a long time before we could start the game. I am glad it went well.”

Rybakina had a poor preparation for the third grand slam tournament of the year due to a virus infection.

Aryna Sabalenka has not been surprised in the third round of Wimbledon. The second-seeded Belarusian convincingly defeated Russia’s Anna Blinkova: 6-2, 6-3. The game lasted 1 hour and 21 minutes.

In the eighth finals, Sabalenka will face another confrontation with a Russian, number 21 Ekaterina Aleksandrova. She settled in the third round in two sets (6-0 and 6-4) with the Hungarian Dalma Galfi.

Sabalenka was not there in Wimbledon last year, because tennis players from Russia and Belarus were not allowed to participate after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine earlier that year. In 2021 she achieved her best result in London with a place in the semifinals.

Sabalenka won her first grand slam title at the Australian Open earlier this year in Melbourne.

Petra Kvitova is in the fourth round of Wimbledon. The ninth-seeded Czech tennis star defeated Serbian qualifier Natalija Stevanovic in straight sets: 6-3, 7-5.

In the eighth finals, Kvitova will meet the winner of the duel between the sixth-seeded Tunisian Ons Jabeur and Canadian Bianca Andreescu, who will meet on Center Court tonight.

The 33-year-old Kvitova won Wimbledon twice, in 2011 and 2014. She never won the other three grand slam tournaments. Kvitova lost the final at the Australian Open in 2019, and two semifinals (2012 and 2020) are her best result at Roland Garros. At the US Open, she never got past the quarterfinals.