No. 1 in the world! Sabalenka reached the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam for the 10th time and won 19 consecutive Australian Open + unbeaten in the new season

In a key match in the Australian Open women's singles quarterfinals that ended on January 21, Beijing time, the current women's singles world No. 1 and defending champion Sabalenka defeated the No. 27 seed Pavlyuchenkova 2-1 after three sets, and after winning 19 consecutive Australian Open victories, she won all 10 matches in the new season and entered the semifinals of the Grand Slam for the 10th time in her career, only 2 steps away from the Australian Open 3 consecutive championships.

As the tournament's top seed and defending champion, Sabalenka has played Pavlyuchenkova three times before, with Sabalenka at the bottom with 1 win and 2 losses. At the French Open four years ago, it was Pavlyuchenkova who eliminated Sabalenka 2-1 in an upset, and even played a 6-0 disparity in the deciding set.

After 4 years, Sabalenka is once again in a bitter battle. In the first set, Sabalenka broke first in the fourth game and held serve in the fifth game to build a 4-1 lead, and in the eighth game Sabalenka broke Pavlyuchenkova's unbreakable serve to win the first set 6-2.

However, in the second game, the situation changed abruptly. Pavlyuchenkova fell behind 0-1 in the third game, and won four games in a row with two consecutive breaks, 4-1. Although Sabalenka broke back in the sixth game, Pavlyuchenkova broke again in the seventh game and won serve in the eighth game to win the set 6-2.

Sabalenka's streak of 25 consecutive wins at the Australian Open came to an end, with the last time she dropped a set was back in the 2023 Australian Open final, when she lost 4-6 to Rybakina in the first set. And after losing the second set, Sabalenka, who was impatient, even made an irrational move to throw a racket.

In the deciding set, both sides broke serve in the first four games, and Sabalenka broke again in the crucial eighth game to take a 5-3 lead, and finally she won the service game in the ninth game, winning the deciding set 6-3, and narrowly won the game 2-1 on aggregate.

After eliminating Pavlyuchenkova, Sabalenka reached the quarterfinals of the Australian Open women's singles for the third consecutive year, and also won 19 consecutive victories in this event. After reaching the semifinals of the Australian Open for three consecutive years, she will face the Spanish beauty Badosa, who knocked out Gauff in an upset.