Indian Wells: Sabalenka sets Rybakina clash as Gauff reach third round

World No.2 Aryna Sabalenka saved four match points to defeat No.64 Peyton Stearns in the second round of the BNP Paribas Open, defeating the American 6-7(2), 6-2, 7-6(6).

The 2-hour and 53-minute victory is Sabalenka’s first since winning the Australian Open title in January.

“I’m super happy that I didn’t give up on that score, and I was really pushing myself hard, even though I didn’t play my best tennis and she was crushing it like crazy,” Sabalenka told reporters. “I was just like trying to stay in the game and keep fighting for every point.

“But this match will definitely go into the book of craziest matches and the best matches of my career.”

A finalist in Indian Wells last year, Sabalenka will face 2021 US Open champion Emma Raducanu in the third round. Raducanu advanced after four games of her second-round clash against Dayana Yastremska. The Ukrainian was trailing 4-0 when she was forced to retire due to illness, putting Raducanu through.

Sabalenka finished the match with 40 winners to 49 unforced errors, including 10 aces and nine double faults. Stearns struck 29 winners to 34 unforced errors.

Raducanu is into the Indian Wells third round for the third straight year. Her career-best performance at the BNP Paribas Open came last year, when she reached the Round of 16 before falling to World No.1 Iga Swiatek.

Elsewhere, Coco Gauff had to dig deep in her first match on U.S. soil since her coronation at last summer’s US Open. In the first round of the BNP Paribas Open against France’s Clara Burel on Saturday, the No.3 seed trailed 6-2, 2-0 — and 4-0 and 5-2 in the third set — but battled all the way back to a 2-6, 6-3, 7-6(4) win and a spot in the third round.

Gauff had won her last 17 matches on U.S. soil — which famously included titles in Washington, D.C. and Cincinnati last summer before her crowning moment in New York, where she became the youngest American woman to win her home major since Serena Williams in 1999.

Gauff moves through to a third-round match against Italy’s Lucia Bronzetti, who scored an upset of her own against No.32 seed Anhelina Kalinina of Ukraine, 6-3, 6-4.