{"id":19236,"date":"2013-01-24T14:58:25","date_gmt":"2013-01-24T19:58:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=19236"},"modified":"2013-01-24T14:58:25","modified_gmt":"2013-01-24T19:58:25","slug":"sloane-stephens-falls-to-victoria-azarenka-in-australian-open-semis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=19236","title":{"rendered":"Sloane Stephens Falls To Victoria Azarenka In Australian Open Semis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>MELBOURNE, Australia \u2014 <strong>Victoria Azarenka<\/strong> had to endure some anxious moments before and after her win over American teenager <strong>Sloane Stephen<\/strong>s. <strong>Li Na<\/strong> wasn\u2019t flustered at all in an easy victory over No. 2-ranked <strong>Maria Sharapova<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>The result is that <strong>Li<\/strong> will play for the Australian Open title against <strong>Azarenka<\/strong>, who ended Stephens\u2019 unexpected run to the semifinals that included a quarterfinal upset of 15-time Grand Slam champion <strong>Serena Williams<\/strong>. <strong>Azarenka<\/strong> needed six match points to finish off a 6-1, 6-4 victory over <strong>Stephens<\/strong> that included a medical timeout after the American broke her serve to pull within 5-3 in the second set. After leaving the court for medical attention, the Belarusian returned to break<strong> Stephens\u2019<\/strong> serve to end the match.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, I almost did the choke of the year,\u201d <strong>Azarenka<\/strong> told an on-court interviewer immediately after the match. \u201cAt 5-3, having so many chances I couldn\u2019t close it out.\u201d The 23-year-old Belarusian\u2019s on-court comments after the match led to speculation about the timing of her medical timeout. She didn\u2019t help herself in a second television interview after the match that suggested the pressure of trying to close out the match was getting to her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MELBOURNE, Australia \u2014 Victoria Azarenka had to endure some anxious moments before and after her win over American teenager Sloane Stephens. Li Na wasn\u2019t flustered at all in an easy victory over No. 2-ranked Maria Sharapova. The result is that Li will play for the Australian Open title against Azarenka, who ended Stephens\u2019 unexpected run [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19236\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}