Baptiste saves six match points to stun Sabalenka and reach first WTA 1000 semi-final
Baptiste (No 30) beat Sabalenka (No 1) 2-6, 6-2, 7-6 (6), saved six match points, and won on the first she got. No player from the world’s top five has reached the semi-finals in Madrid. The draw has been turned upside down – and a 24-year-old American from Washington D.C. did most of the turning.
Hayley Baptiste and Aryna Sabalenka, Madrid 2026 | © Madrid Trophy Promotion
Hailey Baptiste, the No 30 seed, produced the performance of her life to eliminate world No 1 Aryna Sabalenka 2-6, 6-2, 7-6 (6) on Tuesday evening at the Mutua Madrid Open, saving six match points to reach her first WTA 1000 semi-final and end the Belarusian’s 15-match winning streak.
The match played out in almost surreal fashion. Sabalenka served for victory at 5-4 in the third set and held five match points in a row. Baptiste saved every one of them. She saved the first with an ace, the second with a serve and volley, and produced a drop-shot lob over Sabalenka’s head on match point number five before finishing with a backhand winner to level at 5-5.
She then broke for 6-5, held, and claimed the title on her first opportunity. “I told my team: when I get my match point today, I’m gonna win the first one that I get,” Baptiste said. “And I did it.”
6 breaks and 12 aces
She broke Sabalenka six times – the most by any opponent in 2026 – and served 12 aces, the most recorded in a single WTA clay-court match against Sabalenka in her career.
Sabalenka was gracious. “She played brave tennis on those match points,” she said. “In the first game of the second set I double faulted twice out of nowhere. It felt like that gave her belief. After that, she just started playing more aggressively. What can I say — well done.”
The last time Sabalenka had lost after squandering match points was the 2024 Madrid final against Iga Swiatek. It is also the third time she has lost at the 16-match mark of a winning streak – after Melbourne in 2021 and Beijing in 2024.
“A little bit of a revenge tour”
Baptiste’s rise has been steady and deliberate. Ranked No 88 at this event a year ago, she arrives at a first WTA 1000 semi-final having beaten Paolini, Bencic and now Sabalenka in succession, doubling her career total of top-10 wins in a single week. She will reach a new career high of No 24 on Monday. “A little bit of a revenge tour, I guess,” she said, when asked about facing Mirra Andreeva, the No 9 seed, in the semi-finals – the Russian having beaten her at Wimbledon last year.
The defeat leaves the top of the women’s game in a state it rarely inhabits. Not one player from the world’s top five has reached the semi-finals. Sabalenka exits in the quarter-finals; Rybakina in the fourth round; Swiatek, retired with illness in the third; Gauff, beaten by Noskova in the fourth; Pegula, eliminated by Kostyuk in the third. Madrid has eaten its seedings whole.
